November 2, 2025 • 30 mins
In June 1964, a Fort Bend County farmer discovered a headless, handless torso in a roadside ditch — a killing so cleanly done that investigators said only someone trained in anatomy could have done it. Sheriff “Tiny” Gaston and the Texas Rangers searched for weeks, but the victim was never identified. Then, just months later, another scene shocked Texas — Room 636 of San Antonio’s Sheraton Gunter Hotel, where blood coated the walls and floor but no body was found. The man who’d checked in under a false name vanished, only to turn up two days later dead by suicide in another downtown hotel. His name was Walter Audley Emerick — a drifter, forger, and former airman who may have been responsible for far more than the crime in that room.
From the rice fields of Fort Bend County to the marble halls of the Gunter, this episode follows the grim trail of the 1960s Texas torso murders and asks whether the mystery that began in the Rio Grande ended that night with a .22 in Room 536 — or if the real killer was still out there.
If you have any information about the Fort Bend Torso Case of 1964, please contact the Sheriff’s Office there at (281) 341-4665.
If you have any information about Walter Audley Emerick or his victim, please contact the San Antonio Police at (210) 207-7635.
Sources: The Houston Post, The Houston Chronicle, The San Antonio Express-News, thegunterhotel.com, historichotels.org
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
#SanAntonio #FortBendCounty #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.
From the rice fields of Fort Bend County to the marble halls of the Gunter, this episode follows the grim trail of the 1960s Texas torso murders and asks whether the mystery that began in the Rio Grande ended that night with a .22 in Room 536 — or if the real killer was still out there.
If you have any information about the Fort Bend Torso Case of 1964, please contact the Sheriff’s Office there at (281) 341-4665.
If you have any information about Walter Audley Emerick or his victim, please contact the San Antonio Police at (210) 207-7635.
Sources: The Houston Post, The Houston Chronicle, The San Antonio Express-News, thegunterhotel.com, historichotels.org
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
#SanAntonio #FortBendCounty #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 coll Podcasts may contain violent or graphic subject matter.
Listener discretion is advised. By the mid nineteen sixties, the
Texas torso murders were already a story that had spread
across the state and even the nation. They'd begun on
the far western edge El Paso County in nineteen fifty nine,
(00:23):
where the Rio Grande snaked through sand and saltbrush. There
a suitcase bobbed against the reeds, and what was inside
changed the county forever, the headless remains of a man,
the work of a hand that understood anatomy and butchery.
Less than three years later, three hundred miles east in
(00:44):
San Jacino County, near Cleveland, another torso surfaced, not far
from the Trinity River. It was a woman, this time,
carved apart with much less precision, crude and irregular, as
one pathologist put it, perhaps the work of someone in
a great hurry. No one ever proved the cases were connected,
(01:06):
but anyone who had ever stood over one of those
torsos felt it in their gut they had to be.
By nineteen sixty four, the killings seemed to have stopped.
The files gathered dust, and even sheriff Bob Bailey out
in Olpasso had announced retirement, though the cases still sat
on his conscience. The lawman used to tell reporters that
(01:29):
a man like that doesn't just quit if the murders
were connected. He was right. Nineteen sixty four brought yet
another case, but even with the addition of this Torso,
the following year would bring about a mystery just as
perplexing and horrific, one that would leave many speculating a
(01:50):
connection to the Texas Torso murders, even though this one
left behind nobody at all. In Fort Bend County, daylight
(02:24):
came slow over the Brazis River bottom on June eleventh,
nineteen sixty four. Rice fields glimmered with shallow water, the
soil red and heavy from weeks of rain. Along Farm
Road three point fifty nine, sixty four year old farmer
George Rhodes started as tractor before sunrise. By five point
(02:45):
ten that morning, he was easing down toward the Jones
Creek bridge when something caught his eye in the ditch,
something round, smooth, almost clean, something that didn't belong. He breaked.
The tractor idled, and for a moment there was only
the hum of insects and the murmur of water through
(03:05):
the grass. Then he saw it, clearly a human torso
lying half submerged in the mud, no head, hands or feet.
Rhoads trembled when he snapped out of the shock, at
least the worst part of it. He drove straight to
a neighbour's phone. Within the hour, Sheriff R. L. Tiny
(03:28):
Gaston and his deputies were on the scene, joined soon
after by Chief Deputy Lloyd Fraser from Houston and A. C.
Martindale from the Medical Examiner's office. The body, what was
left of it, was taken to Bintob Hospital in Houston.
Martindale estimated the torso had been dumped there no more
(03:49):
than twenty four hours earlier. Whoever left it, he told
the press, made no effort to hide or cover it.
Whoever did it might have wanted the torso found, but
it was obvious. The investigator added that someone didn't want
this man's identity known. The ditch was open ground, no
(04:10):
trees for concealment, no attempt at burial, just a blunt
message left on the roadside. The autopsy fell to doctor
Robert V. Bucklin, Associate medical Examiner. He found the victim
to be a white male, around six feet tall, near
fifty years old, weighing roughly one hundred and eighty pounds,
(04:32):
with dark hair still clinging to the shoulders. The head
was gone, the arms removed cleanly at the wrists, the legs,
at the knees. A single rib the sixth was broken,
but there were no defensive wounds or bruising. Every cut
was straight, not hacking, not hesitation. Straight. Doctor Buckland said
(04:56):
it looked as though a sharp knife of surgical quality
had been used, possibly even a scalpel. There's an easy
way and a hard way to remove limbs, he told deputies.
Amateurs never find the easy way. This person did. He
concluded that whoever performed the dismemberment had at least a
(05:18):
working knowledge of anatomy. Doctor, mortician, medical student, butcher, take
your pick, he said. But they knew exactly where to
cut on the corpse. There was no sign of gunshot
or knife injury. Buckland determined the man had died first,
likely of a wound to the head or neck, and
(05:39):
only afterward was the body taken apart. Gaston's men scoured
the roadside and nearby rice paddies for any trace of
the missing parts. They found nothing. The ditch itself was
dry of blood, meaning the killing and dismemberment had happened
somewhere else entirely. Whoever the victim was, he'd been transported
(06:03):
here and discarded like waste. Fort Ben County called in help,
the Texas Rangers, the Harris County Sheriff's office, and the
Houston Police. Every missing person report from the region was
compared against the medical description. Families from Galveston and Harris
County came to view the torso at Ben Tobb, clinging
(06:26):
to hope and dreading confirmation at the same time. None
recognized him. There were no tattoos, no scars, no surgical marks,
not even a birthmark. That Thursday night, the story hit
the front page of the Houston Chronicle. Acts believed used
to chop victim apart. It was sensational and contradicted the
(06:49):
medical examiner's comments that a scalpel or other surgical quality
blade was used. The next day, the post followed with
another grim line killer skilled in anatomy. This one closer
resembled the truth. Sheriff Gaston told reporters that they were
looking first and foremost for a name without one. There
(07:13):
was little else to chase, but without a head, fingers,
or other identifiable parts, it was a long shot. Investigators
questioned an iron worker from Oklahoma, picked up in Austin
after luring a boy away from a ballpark. Deputies found
no sharp tools in his car, no blood, and no
(07:34):
link to the murder. He was cleared of involvement in
the Torso case. By the weekend, the search widened. Deputies
took to the air in a small plane, hoping to
spot an abandoned vehicle somewhere in the farmland. From above,
the roads cut straight through flooded paddies, nothing but the
(07:55):
shimmer of water and the dark rectangles of planted rice.
They found no car, no sign at all. On June nineteenth,
Sheriff Gaston organized a twenty five mile sweep of the
Brazas River from Simonton to Richmond. Rangers in flat bottomed
boats probed snags and eddies with long poles. The river
(08:18):
was high and brown, carrying driftwood and the occasional foul odor,
but it gave up nothing human. Our first and foremost thought,
Gaston said, grimly, is to identify the victim. The goings
rough with no leads over the next two months, his
office checked the names and descriptions of more than fifty
(08:40):
missing men. Not one matched the build or age of
the victim. Every rumor runaway laborers, missing sailors from Galveston,
a drifter gone from a Houston boarding house ended the
same way dead ends. By late August, the newspaper admits
the investigation had stalled. The Houston Post noted that the
(09:04):
sheriff had traced every bit of information and so far
has nothing. The tone was weary, almost resigned, But the
whispers started again about the other torsos, one discovered in
June nineteen fifty nine near ol Passo and another February
nineteen sixty two near Cleveland, both butchered and both without heads.
(09:29):
The first was dissected with the care of someone who'd
done it before, someone who wasn't in a hurry. The
other dismemberment was considered crude and irregular by the pathologist
who examined the parts, Perhaps hurried. A reporter asked Fort
Bend County Sheriff Tiny Gaston if the cases might be
(09:51):
linked to his He did not answer directly. In fact,
he skirted around the question entirely, just said we've checked
on about fifty missing persons. This time, the leads were
even fewer and farther in between, and law enforcement officials
were quieter about the case. As a result, the news
(10:13):
cycle moved on quickly. The body in Fort Bend County
was placed in a freezer and labeled as John Doe
sixty four Dash six. The case file was as thick
as a dictionary, but evidence slim as a single piece
of the paper within. For the next several months, the
Texas Torso murders once again stopped. Then came February nineteen
(10:38):
sixty five and a new case that didn't look like
the others at first, but would soon feel like a
connection was possible. The Sheridan Gunter Hotel stood like an
(11:00):
urban palace on Houston Street in downtown San Antonio, eight
stories of buff masonry trimmed in limestone, its lobby full
of polished brass, and the echo of leather souls on marble.
Guests came for conferences and the Riverwalk, not headlines, but
(11:20):
there was plenty going on at the Gunter to ride about.
Named for local rancher and investor Jonathan Jot Gunter, the
hotel was designed to signal ambition and elegance in a
city on the move. Its architecture and scale were unlike
anything yet seen in San Antonio, marking it as a
(11:41):
first class destination for business travelers, visitors, and celebrated guests alike.
Over the decades, the Gunter witnessed history. President Harry S. Truman,
baseball icon Joe DiMaggio, and even the pioneering air cadets
of the Second World War danced in its ballrooms. Its
(12:03):
rooms also heard the echoes of some of the most
important American music ever recorded. In Room four fourteen, legendary
blues musician Robert Johnson laid down the first sixteen of
his twenty nine recorded songs. Less than two years after
making those recordings, Johnson, who was so adept at playing
(12:25):
the guitar that some believed he sold his soul to
the devil, died at age twenty seven, becoming the first
member of the so called twenty seven Club, whose unfortunate
roster includes names like Jimmy Hendricks, Janis Joplin, and Kurt Cobain.
Truth is, however, there was no devil involved. Then infamy
(12:47):
came to the Gunter in early February of nineteen sixty five,
a man under the alias Albert Cox, a man whose
work was truly devilish, checked into the Gunter Hotel at
about five point forty on a Monday evening, the eighth
day of the month. Housekeeper Maria Luisa Guerrera thirty seven,
(13:09):
carried fresh towels to room six thirty six. She had
knocked twice when the door creaked open, slowly, stopping halfway.
A man in his thirties stood there, lean, dark haired,
lifting a large wrapped parcel from the floor. He raised
one finger to his lips, sh and walked past her
(13:32):
into the corridor. Carrying the parcel from the doorway, Maria
saw the blood, a thick pool of red amid disheveled bedding.
The odor of iron spilled into the room. She dropped
her towels and ran. By six thirty pm, homicide detectives
had arrived. The scene stopped even veteran officers. Cold blood
(13:57):
was everywhere on the walls, the bed, pooled on the
tile in the bathroom. Shoe prints found were of two sizes,
some large and some small. A twenty two caliber shellcasing
lay on the bedspread, and a slug was buried in
the wall behind a dresser. A chair by that dresser
(14:17):
had been soaked until the stuffing bled through its seams.
Scattered among the gore were four empty wine bottles, a
half eaten package of imported cheese, a ten of sardines,
women's nylon stockings, strands of blonde hair, and a tissue
with lipstick print. Right away, detectives knew they had a
(14:40):
mystery on their hands. They just had no idea how
significant it would be and for how long. Doctor Reuben Santos,
Bear County Medical Examiner confirmed the blood from room six
point thirty six was human, more than any person could
lose and survive. He told investigators flatly that this was
(15:03):
no miscarriage or botched medical procedure. Someone died in there,
he said, and they didn't walk out. There was no body,
no identifying items to be found, only the smell, the stains,
and the certainty that murder had happened inside the hotel room.
(15:23):
Inspector Joe Hester, head of the city's Criminal Investigation Division,
took command that night. The register showed the guest had
arrived February second and paid cash. His address was fictitious.
By dawn, San Antonio police had issued a statewide alert
(15:43):
for the man known as Albert Cox. Detective Frank Castillone,
a thick shouldered man with a quiet voice, carried the
Gunter Hotel in his head for the next two days.
He and partner Bob Holt carted a suitcase from stored
a store, asking clerks if they recognized it. Inside for
(16:05):
empty wine bottles, sardine's and imported cheese. Now reeking with Rod,
it wasn't heavy, Castillon later said, just awful. At the
San Antonio Trunk and Gift Company on Alamo Plaza, a
salesman remembered selling that same suitcase on February third. The
(16:26):
customer had paid with a personalized check signed John J. McCarthy.
Across town, at Shiloh's Delicatessen, clerks recalled a man using
another McCarthy check to buy twelve dollars and eighty cents
worth of food, cheese, sardine's, and olives. But it wasn't
a mister McCarthy. One employee explained it was his step son,
(16:50):
Walter something Urick. Maybe Back at headquarters. A quick call
to the District Attorney's hot Check division confirmed it. A
forgery complaint had been filed just two days earlier by
missus John J. McCarthy against her son, Walter Emerick, thirty
eight years old. Fifty checks were stolen, and there was
(17:13):
a warrant already open. Fingerprint expert A. M. Davenport compared
latent prints from room six thirty six of the Gunter
with Emerick's nineteen sixty record, a charge of forgery which
later became a conviction. The Prince matched Ridge for Ridge
detectives already knew they were onto something, but now they
(17:35):
had evidence. By eight pm on Wednesday, February tenth, a
statewide bulletin went out naming Walter A. Emerick, unemployed accountant,
habitual drinker, and ex Air Force veteran. Three hours later,
a security officer at the Saint Anthony Hotel, only two
(17:55):
blocks from the Gunter, phoned police. A guest in an
room five thirty six, registered as Robert Ashley, had refused
MAIDE service since checking in on Tuesday. When staff knocked,
the man barked through the door. I don't want anything.
It was unusual enough, particularly considering the recent headlines. The
(18:20):
security officer, Sandor Ambros Junior, had been following the Gunter
story and noticed the coincidence Room six thirty six at
one Hotel five thirty six. At the other, Ambros called
his friend in homicide, Lieutenant George Martin, came himself. He
checked the signature on the card. The lawman recognized it
(18:43):
as the same slanted hand in which the registry at
the Gunter was signed. Lieutenant Martin gathered a small team, Martin, Ambrose, Castillone,
and District Attorney Investigator Jose Lucero. At eleven pm, they
stood in the fifth floor hallway outside room five point
thirty six with a maid and a master key. Ambros
(19:07):
called through the door, Sir, do you need any fresh towels? No,
the voice answered, I don't want any service. The hall
smelled faintly of cigar smoke. Ambrous slid the key into
the lock. A gunshot cracked, once, small as a firecracker,
then silence. The officers pressed against the wall and waited.
(19:30):
Castillone heard nothing and drove his shoulder through the door
inside Walter Oddly. Emerick lay across the bed, a twenty
two caliber pistol still in his right hand, a hole
in his temple. He gasped a couple times. Castillone quickly
took the gun from his grip and tried to speak
(19:51):
to him, but the man was already gone. Emeriic was
clad in only blue shorts and a sleeveless undershirt. On
the dresser sat a new suitcase packed with clean clothes.
A white shirt hung damp from the sink. Someone had
tried to rense blood from it. It matched exactly one
(20:12):
found in Room six thirty six by size and brand.
Nearby were cigar butts of the same blend snuffed out
in the gunter. A woman's cigarette lighter lay beside the bed,
engraved with the initials CR. Doctor Reuben Santos pronounced Emeric
(20:32):
dead at eleven twenty five pm. With that gunshot, the
investigation lost its only living witness, but with the lighter,
detectives held onto the hope that the mystery in Room
six thirty six would be solved by sunrise. On Thursday day,
(21:00):
February eleventh, nineteen sixty five, the front pages of local
newspapers screamed what happened in Rooms six thirty six. Meanwhile,
the police were hunting for a body. They had dragged
the San Antonio River, scoured downtown sewers, searched bus station lockers, dumpsters,
(21:21):
and hotel trash bends nothing, not one trace of human remains.
Inspector Hester confirmed that the small footprint found in blood
on the tile came from a woman's shoe. It raised
a serious question for detectives to consider, did Emerik have
a female accomplice. The blonde hairs found in Rooms six
(21:43):
thirty six matched those recovered from the bathroom drain. Witnesses
had seen a young woman five eight slender, late twenties
enter the hotel room on the Saturday night prior to
the possible murder. Sunday morning, a woman's v VO had
told the maids to skip the room today. At Shiloh's Deli,
(22:05):
employees reported that Emeriic often dined with a blonde. In fact,
employees had seen them together on February first, the day
before he checked into the gunter. Detectives believed the victim
was a woman, probably shot with a twenty two caliber
pistol and dismembered afterward. The lighter with the initials CAR
(22:27):
became the only tangible clue. Then, two saleswomen from Sears
added a chilling detail. On Tuesday, one day after the
maid discovered the blood, a man they later identified as Emeeric,
tried to buy a meat grinder. He asked for the
biggest model available. When told it would take time to
(22:49):
bring one from the stock room, he snapped, I need
it now and walked out. Later that afternoon, he checked
into the Saint Anthony under the alias Rode Robert Ashley.
On February thirteen, police divers and explorer scouts joined a
flotilla of sixteen boats sweeping the river as far south
(23:11):
as Berg's Mill. They found nothing but beer cans and
used tires. A call about a dog chewing what looked
like human ribs came in, but they turned out to
be pig bones. That day, Walter Emerick was buried with
full military honors at Fort sam Houston National Cemetery, an
(23:32):
honor guard over a man most of the city now
called a butcher. His mother, missus Rosemary McCarthy, attended quietly.
Detectives continued fielding calls about missing women from across Texas,
but none fit. Then, on February fifteen, a woman in
her late thirties came forward to claim the lighter engraved car.
(23:56):
She told Sheriff Bill Howke and Inspector Hester that she'd
met a man named Casey at a downtown bar, and
recognized his photograph in the newspaper as Walter Emeriic. On
February sixth, after a dental appointment left her dizzy, Emeric
offered his hotel room at the Gunters so she could
rest before catching a cab. She stayed about forty five minutes,
(24:20):
saw a suitcase and shopping bag, but no blood, and
left at around eleven pm. She'd simply forgotten the lighter there,
which was a gift from her mother. She described Emeric
as courteous, quiet, a gentleman. The woman's statement cleared the
lighter from suspicion, but deepened the mystery of the blood.
(24:44):
Lieutenant Hester told reporters right now were more interested in
the dead than the living. They needed an identity, They
needed a body. Police traced Emeric's movements after the encounter
with the woman. He likely spent Sunday cleaning the room,
disposing of evidence, then checking into a second motel Monday
(25:06):
night without luggage, skipped the bill and moved to the
Saint Anthony the next day. A clerk at CNS Sporting
Goods remembered selling him a pair of golf shoes on
February second, accompanied again by a blond woman. By March fifth,
only one piece of physical evidence remained untested, a green
(25:29):
powder caked to the soles of Emeric's shoes. Hester sent
them to the Department of Public Safety lab in Austin.
The analysis came back inconclusive ordinary paint dust, maybe copper corrosion.
With that, the case ran out of road. Hester told
(25:49):
reporters they could now track Emeric almost minute by minute,
but the trail of his presumed victim disappeared completely. Without
a body, there could be no official murder case, only
a bloody room, a dead suspect, and a story that
refused to fit into any report. By the summer of
(26:10):
nineteen sixty five, the mystery of Room six thirty six
at the Gunter Hotel had already become a haunted legend
in San Antonio, but the city moved on Walter Audley Emerick,
after all, couldn't harm anyone else. For lawman who remembered
the older cases, the torso in Opaso County, the woman
(26:32):
near Cleveland, the headless man in Fort Bend County. The
echo was unmistakable, a transient man skilled with a blade,
comfortable in hotels vanishing between counties. A traveler whose habits
fit the pattern of every unsolved torso from the last decade,
(26:53):
Emeric seemed to fit the bill. Five hundred and fifty
miles to the northwest of the Gunter Hotel Hell and
its room six thirty six in Opaso County, former Sheriff
Robert Bob Bailey was enjoying retirement, although the law enforcement
bugs still nipped at him. Bailey became officially retired only
(27:14):
about a month before Emerick did whatever it was he
did in that hotel room. Given the theorized nature of
the crime in San Antonio, had he been in office
in February of nineteen sixty five, its likely Bailey would
have been chomping at the bit to investigate Emeric for
his torso case, just as its likely authorities in San
(27:37):
Jacino County, about two hundred and forty miles to the
city of the Alamo's northeast. Lawman in New Mexico, as
well as the case of the brutal murder and mutilation
of school teacher Charles Cox was and still is unsolved
when he strayed from home, particularly on drinking binges. Emeric
(27:59):
was now to travel and stay in hotels, and Cox
was last seen leaving one. But because of a lack
of press coverage or interest, it seems the question of
whether Walter Audley Emerick could be responsible for the Elpaso,
Sanjacento or Fort Ben County Torso murders was never even
asked in the court of public opinion. Those puzzles, and
(28:23):
the question of what happened and to whom in Rooms
six thirty sixth of the Gunter remained just that. More
than sixty years later, had Emerick been the phantom that
haunted Texas law enforcement since nineteen fifty nine? Sheriff Bob
Bailey had once said that a man like that doesn't
just quit. Maybe he was right. Maybe he quit only
(28:46):
when he put a twenty two to his own head
in room five thirty six. Either way, Emeric took it
to the grave, and in San Antonio it remains a
ghost story because whatever happened in Room six thirty six
of the Sheraton Gunter Hotel, whatever body was cut apart
and carried out in that brown package, it remains six
(29:09):
decades later, one more name missing from the long cold
story of the Texas Torso murders. If you have any
information about the Fort Bend County Torso case of nineteen
sixty four, please contact the Sheriff's office there at two
eight one three four one four six sixty five. If
(29:32):
you have any information about Walter Audley Emerick or his victim,
please contact the San Antonio Police at two to one
zero two zero seven seven six three five. If you'd
like to join gon Cold's mission to shine a light
on unsolved homicides and missing persons cases, get the show
(29:53):
at free and have access to bonus content, you can
at Patreon dot com slash Gone Cold Podcast. You can
also support the show by leaving a five star rating
and written review on Apple Podcasts or wherever else you listen.
However you choose to support Gone Cold, we appreciate you.
(30:14):
Thanks for listening, y'all,
Gone coll Podcasts may contain violent or graphic subject matter.
Listener discretion is advised. By the mid nineteen sixties, the
Texas torso murders were already a story that had spread
across the state and even the nation. They'd begun on
the far western edge El Paso County in nineteen fifty nine,
(00:23):
where the Rio Grande snaked through sand and saltbrush. There
a suitcase bobbed against the reeds, and what was inside
changed the county forever, the headless remains of a man,
the work of a hand that understood anatomy and butchery.
Less than three years later, three hundred miles east in
(00:44):
San Jacino County, near Cleveland, another torso surfaced, not far
from the Trinity River. It was a woman, this time,
carved apart with much less precision, crude and irregular, as
one pathologist put it, perhaps the work of someone in
a great hurry. No one ever proved the cases were connected,
(01:06):
but anyone who had ever stood over one of those
torsos felt it in their gut they had to be.
By nineteen sixty four, the killings seemed to have stopped.
The files gathered dust, and even sheriff Bob Bailey out
in Olpasso had announced retirement, though the cases still sat
on his conscience. The lawman used to tell reporters that
(01:29):
a man like that doesn't just quit if the murders
were connected. He was right. Nineteen sixty four brought yet
another case, but even with the addition of this Torso,
the following year would bring about a mystery just as
perplexing and horrific, one that would leave many speculating a
(01:50):
connection to the Texas Torso murders, even though this one
left behind nobody at all. In Fort Bend County, daylight
(02:24):
came slow over the Brazis River bottom on June eleventh,
nineteen sixty four. Rice fields glimmered with shallow water, the
soil red and heavy from weeks of rain. Along Farm
Road three point fifty nine, sixty four year old farmer
George Rhodes started as tractor before sunrise. By five point
(02:45):
ten that morning, he was easing down toward the Jones
Creek bridge when something caught his eye in the ditch,
something round, smooth, almost clean, something that didn't belong. He breaked.
The tractor idled, and for a moment there was only
the hum of insects and the murmur of water through
(03:05):
the grass. Then he saw it, clearly a human torso
lying half submerged in the mud, no head, hands or feet.
Rhoads trembled when he snapped out of the shock, at
least the worst part of it. He drove straight to
a neighbour's phone. Within the hour, Sheriff R. L. Tiny
(03:28):
Gaston and his deputies were on the scene, joined soon
after by Chief Deputy Lloyd Fraser from Houston and A. C.
Martindale from the Medical Examiner's office. The body, what was
left of it, was taken to Bintob Hospital in Houston.
Martindale estimated the torso had been dumped there no more
(03:49):
than twenty four hours earlier. Whoever left it, he told
the press, made no effort to hide or cover it.
Whoever did it might have wanted the torso found, but
it was obvious. The investigator added that someone didn't want
this man's identity known. The ditch was open ground, no
(04:10):
trees for concealment, no attempt at burial, just a blunt
message left on the roadside. The autopsy fell to doctor
Robert V. Bucklin, Associate medical Examiner. He found the victim
to be a white male, around six feet tall, near
fifty years old, weighing roughly one hundred and eighty pounds,
(04:32):
with dark hair still clinging to the shoulders. The head
was gone, the arms removed cleanly at the wrists, the legs,
at the knees. A single rib the sixth was broken,
but there were no defensive wounds or bruising. Every cut
was straight, not hacking, not hesitation. Straight. Doctor Buckland said
(04:56):
it looked as though a sharp knife of surgical quality
had been used, possibly even a scalpel. There's an easy
way and a hard way to remove limbs, he told deputies.
Amateurs never find the easy way. This person did. He
concluded that whoever performed the dismemberment had at least a
(05:18):
working knowledge of anatomy. Doctor, mortician, medical student, butcher, take
your pick, he said. But they knew exactly where to
cut on the corpse. There was no sign of gunshot
or knife injury. Buckland determined the man had died first,
likely of a wound to the head or neck, and
(05:39):
only afterward was the body taken apart. Gaston's men scoured
the roadside and nearby rice paddies for any trace of
the missing parts. They found nothing. The ditch itself was
dry of blood, meaning the killing and dismemberment had happened
somewhere else entirely. Whoever the victim was, he'd been transported
(06:03):
here and discarded like waste. Fort Ben County called in help,
the Texas Rangers, the Harris County Sheriff's office, and the
Houston Police. Every missing person report from the region was
compared against the medical description. Families from Galveston and Harris
County came to view the torso at Ben Tobb, clinging
(06:26):
to hope and dreading confirmation at the same time. None
recognized him. There were no tattoos, no scars, no surgical marks,
not even a birthmark. That Thursday night, the story hit
the front page of the Houston Chronicle. Acts believed used
to chop victim apart. It was sensational and contradicted the
(06:49):
medical examiner's comments that a scalpel or other surgical quality
blade was used. The next day, the post followed with
another grim line killer skilled in anatomy. This one closer
resembled the truth. Sheriff Gaston told reporters that they were
looking first and foremost for a name without one. There
(07:13):
was little else to chase, but without a head, fingers,
or other identifiable parts, it was a long shot. Investigators
questioned an iron worker from Oklahoma, picked up in Austin
after luring a boy away from a ballpark. Deputies found
no sharp tools in his car, no blood, and no
(07:34):
link to the murder. He was cleared of involvement in
the Torso case. By the weekend, the search widened. Deputies
took to the air in a small plane, hoping to
spot an abandoned vehicle somewhere in the farmland. From above,
the roads cut straight through flooded paddies, nothing but the
(07:55):
shimmer of water and the dark rectangles of planted rice.
They found no car, no sign at all. On June nineteenth,
Sheriff Gaston organized a twenty five mile sweep of the
Brazas River from Simonton to Richmond. Rangers in flat bottomed
boats probed snags and eddies with long poles. The river
(08:18):
was high and brown, carrying driftwood and the occasional foul odor,
but it gave up nothing human. Our first and foremost thought,
Gaston said, grimly, is to identify the victim. The goings
rough with no leads over the next two months, his
office checked the names and descriptions of more than fifty
(08:40):
missing men. Not one matched the build or age of
the victim. Every rumor runaway laborers, missing sailors from Galveston,
a drifter gone from a Houston boarding house ended the
same way dead ends. By late August, the newspaper admits
the investigation had stalled. The Houston Post noted that the
(09:04):
sheriff had traced every bit of information and so far
has nothing. The tone was weary, almost resigned, But the
whispers started again about the other torsos, one discovered in
June nineteen fifty nine near ol Passo and another February
nineteen sixty two near Cleveland, both butchered and both without heads.
(09:29):
The first was dissected with the care of someone who'd
done it before, someone who wasn't in a hurry. The
other dismemberment was considered crude and irregular by the pathologist
who examined the parts, Perhaps hurried. A reporter asked Fort
Bend County Sheriff Tiny Gaston if the cases might be
(09:51):
linked to his He did not answer directly. In fact,
he skirted around the question entirely, just said we've checked
on about fifty missing persons. This time, the leads were
even fewer and farther in between, and law enforcement officials
were quieter about the case. As a result, the news
(10:13):
cycle moved on quickly. The body in Fort Bend County
was placed in a freezer and labeled as John Doe
sixty four Dash six. The case file was as thick
as a dictionary, but evidence slim as a single piece
of the paper within. For the next several months, the
Texas Torso murders once again stopped. Then came February nineteen
(10:38):
sixty five and a new case that didn't look like
the others at first, but would soon feel like a
connection was possible. The Sheridan Gunter Hotel stood like an
(11:00):
urban palace on Houston Street in downtown San Antonio, eight
stories of buff masonry trimmed in limestone, its lobby full
of polished brass, and the echo of leather souls on marble.
Guests came for conferences and the Riverwalk, not headlines, but
(11:20):
there was plenty going on at the Gunter to ride about.
Named for local rancher and investor Jonathan Jot Gunter, the
hotel was designed to signal ambition and elegance in a
city on the move. Its architecture and scale were unlike
anything yet seen in San Antonio, marking it as a
(11:41):
first class destination for business travelers, visitors, and celebrated guests alike.
Over the decades, the Gunter witnessed history. President Harry S. Truman,
baseball icon Joe DiMaggio, and even the pioneering air cadets
of the Second World War danced in its ballrooms. Its
(12:03):
rooms also heard the echoes of some of the most
important American music ever recorded. In Room four fourteen, legendary
blues musician Robert Johnson laid down the first sixteen of
his twenty nine recorded songs. Less than two years after
making those recordings, Johnson, who was so adept at playing
(12:25):
the guitar that some believed he sold his soul to
the devil, died at age twenty seven, becoming the first
member of the so called twenty seven Club, whose unfortunate
roster includes names like Jimmy Hendricks, Janis Joplin, and Kurt Cobain.
Truth is, however, there was no devil involved. Then infamy
(12:47):
came to the Gunter in early February of nineteen sixty five,
a man under the alias Albert Cox, a man whose
work was truly devilish, checked into the Gunter Hotel at
about five point forty on a Monday evening, the eighth
day of the month. Housekeeper Maria Luisa Guerrera thirty seven,
(13:09):
carried fresh towels to room six thirty six. She had
knocked twice when the door creaked open, slowly, stopping halfway.
A man in his thirties stood there, lean, dark haired,
lifting a large wrapped parcel from the floor. He raised
one finger to his lips, sh and walked past her
(13:32):
into the corridor. Carrying the parcel from the doorway, Maria
saw the blood, a thick pool of red amid disheveled bedding.
The odor of iron spilled into the room. She dropped
her towels and ran. By six thirty pm, homicide detectives
had arrived. The scene stopped even veteran officers. Cold blood
(13:57):
was everywhere on the walls, the bed, pooled on the
tile in the bathroom. Shoe prints found were of two sizes,
some large and some small. A twenty two caliber shellcasing
lay on the bedspread, and a slug was buried in
the wall behind a dresser. A chair by that dresser
(14:17):
had been soaked until the stuffing bled through its seams.
Scattered among the gore were four empty wine bottles, a
half eaten package of imported cheese, a ten of sardines,
women's nylon stockings, strands of blonde hair, and a tissue
with lipstick print. Right away, detectives knew they had a
(14:40):
mystery on their hands. They just had no idea how
significant it would be and for how long. Doctor Reuben Santos,
Bear County Medical Examiner confirmed the blood from room six
point thirty six was human, more than any person could
lose and survive. He told investigators flatly that this was
(15:03):
no miscarriage or botched medical procedure. Someone died in there,
he said, and they didn't walk out. There was no body,
no identifying items to be found, only the smell, the stains,
and the certainty that murder had happened inside the hotel room.
(15:23):
Inspector Joe Hester, head of the city's Criminal Investigation Division,
took command that night. The register showed the guest had
arrived February second and paid cash. His address was fictitious.
By dawn, San Antonio police had issued a statewide alert
(15:43):
for the man known as Albert Cox. Detective Frank Castillone,
a thick shouldered man with a quiet voice, carried the
Gunter Hotel in his head for the next two days.
He and partner Bob Holt carted a suitcase from stored
a store, asking clerks if they recognized it. Inside for
(16:05):
empty wine bottles, sardine's and imported cheese. Now reeking with Rod,
it wasn't heavy, Castillon later said, just awful. At the
San Antonio Trunk and Gift Company on Alamo Plaza, a
salesman remembered selling that same suitcase on February third. The
(16:26):
customer had paid with a personalized check signed John J. McCarthy.
Across town, at Shiloh's Delicatessen, clerks recalled a man using
another McCarthy check to buy twelve dollars and eighty cents
worth of food, cheese, sardine's, and olives. But it wasn't
a mister McCarthy. One employee explained it was his step son,
(16:50):
Walter something Urick. Maybe Back at headquarters. A quick call
to the District Attorney's hot Check division confirmed it. A
forgery complaint had been filed just two days earlier by
missus John J. McCarthy against her son, Walter Emerick, thirty
eight years old. Fifty checks were stolen, and there was
(17:13):
a warrant already open. Fingerprint expert A. M. Davenport compared
latent prints from room six thirty six of the Gunter
with Emerick's nineteen sixty record, a charge of forgery which
later became a conviction. The Prince matched Ridge for Ridge
detectives already knew they were onto something, but now they
(17:35):
had evidence. By eight pm on Wednesday, February tenth, a
statewide bulletin went out naming Walter A. Emerick, unemployed accountant,
habitual drinker, and ex Air Force veteran. Three hours later,
a security officer at the Saint Anthony Hotel, only two
(17:55):
blocks from the Gunter, phoned police. A guest in an
room five thirty six, registered as Robert Ashley, had refused
MAIDE service since checking in on Tuesday. When staff knocked,
the man barked through the door. I don't want anything.
It was unusual enough, particularly considering the recent headlines. The
(18:20):
security officer, Sandor Ambros Junior, had been following the Gunter
story and noticed the coincidence Room six thirty six at
one Hotel five thirty six. At the other, Ambros called
his friend in homicide, Lieutenant George Martin, came himself. He
checked the signature on the card. The lawman recognized it
(18:43):
as the same slanted hand in which the registry at
the Gunter was signed. Lieutenant Martin gathered a small team, Martin, Ambrose, Castillone,
and District Attorney Investigator Jose Lucero. At eleven pm, they
stood in the fifth floor hallway outside room five point
thirty six with a maid and a master key. Ambros
(19:07):
called through the door, Sir, do you need any fresh towels? No,
the voice answered, I don't want any service. The hall
smelled faintly of cigar smoke. Ambrous slid the key into
the lock. A gunshot cracked, once, small as a firecracker,
then silence. The officers pressed against the wall and waited.
(19:30):
Castillone heard nothing and drove his shoulder through the door
inside Walter Oddly. Emerick lay across the bed, a twenty
two caliber pistol still in his right hand, a hole
in his temple. He gasped a couple times. Castillone quickly
took the gun from his grip and tried to speak
(19:51):
to him, but the man was already gone. Emeriic was
clad in only blue shorts and a sleeveless undershirt. On
the dresser sat a new suitcase packed with clean clothes.
A white shirt hung damp from the sink. Someone had
tried to rense blood from it. It matched exactly one
(20:12):
found in Room six thirty six by size and brand.
Nearby were cigar butts of the same blend snuffed out
in the gunter. A woman's cigarette lighter lay beside the bed,
engraved with the initials CR. Doctor Reuben Santos pronounced Emeric
(20:32):
dead at eleven twenty five pm. With that gunshot, the
investigation lost its only living witness, but with the lighter,
detectives held onto the hope that the mystery in Room
six thirty six would be solved by sunrise. On Thursday day,
(21:00):
February eleventh, nineteen sixty five, the front pages of local
newspapers screamed what happened in Rooms six thirty six. Meanwhile,
the police were hunting for a body. They had dragged
the San Antonio River, scoured downtown sewers, searched bus station lockers, dumpsters,
(21:21):
and hotel trash bends nothing, not one trace of human remains.
Inspector Hester confirmed that the small footprint found in blood
on the tile came from a woman's shoe. It raised
a serious question for detectives to consider, did Emerik have
a female accomplice. The blonde hairs found in Rooms six
(21:43):
thirty six matched those recovered from the bathroom drain. Witnesses
had seen a young woman five eight slender, late twenties
enter the hotel room on the Saturday night prior to
the possible murder. Sunday morning, a woman's v VO had
told the maids to skip the room today. At Shiloh's Deli,
(22:05):
employees reported that Emeriic often dined with a blonde. In fact,
employees had seen them together on February first, the day
before he checked into the gunter. Detectives believed the victim
was a woman, probably shot with a twenty two caliber
pistol and dismembered afterward. The lighter with the initials CAR
(22:27):
became the only tangible clue. Then, two saleswomen from Sears
added a chilling detail. On Tuesday, one day after the
maid discovered the blood, a man they later identified as Emeeric,
tried to buy a meat grinder. He asked for the
biggest model available. When told it would take time to
(22:49):
bring one from the stock room, he snapped, I need
it now and walked out. Later that afternoon, he checked
into the Saint Anthony under the alias Rode Robert Ashley.
On February thirteen, police divers and explorer scouts joined a
flotilla of sixteen boats sweeping the river as far south
(23:11):
as Berg's Mill. They found nothing but beer cans and
used tires. A call about a dog chewing what looked
like human ribs came in, but they turned out to
be pig bones. That day, Walter Emerick was buried with
full military honors at Fort sam Houston National Cemetery, an
(23:32):
honor guard over a man most of the city now
called a butcher. His mother, missus Rosemary McCarthy, attended quietly.
Detectives continued fielding calls about missing women from across Texas,
but none fit. Then, on February fifteen, a woman in
her late thirties came forward to claim the lighter engraved car.
(23:56):
She told Sheriff Bill Howke and Inspector Hester that she'd
met a man named Casey at a downtown bar, and
recognized his photograph in the newspaper as Walter Emeriic. On
February sixth, after a dental appointment left her dizzy, Emeric
offered his hotel room at the Gunters so she could
rest before catching a cab. She stayed about forty five minutes,
(24:20):
saw a suitcase and shopping bag, but no blood, and
left at around eleven pm. She'd simply forgotten the lighter there,
which was a gift from her mother. She described Emeric
as courteous, quiet, a gentleman. The woman's statement cleared the
lighter from suspicion, but deepened the mystery of the blood.
(24:44):
Lieutenant Hester told reporters right now were more interested in
the dead than the living. They needed an identity, They
needed a body. Police traced Emeric's movements after the encounter
with the woman. He likely spent Sunday cleaning the room,
disposing of evidence, then checking into a second motel Monday
(25:06):
night without luggage, skipped the bill and moved to the
Saint Anthony the next day. A clerk at CNS Sporting
Goods remembered selling him a pair of golf shoes on
February second, accompanied again by a blond woman. By March fifth,
only one piece of physical evidence remained untested, a green
(25:29):
powder caked to the soles of Emeric's shoes. Hester sent
them to the Department of Public Safety lab in Austin.
The analysis came back inconclusive ordinary paint dust, maybe copper corrosion.
With that, the case ran out of road. Hester told
(25:49):
reporters they could now track Emeric almost minute by minute,
but the trail of his presumed victim disappeared completely. Without
a body, there could be no official murder case, only
a bloody room, a dead suspect, and a story that
refused to fit into any report. By the summer of
(26:10):
nineteen sixty five, the mystery of Room six thirty six
at the Gunter Hotel had already become a haunted legend
in San Antonio, but the city moved on Walter Audley Emerick,
after all, couldn't harm anyone else. For lawman who remembered
the older cases, the torso in Opaso County, the woman
(26:32):
near Cleveland, the headless man in Fort Bend County. The
echo was unmistakable, a transient man skilled with a blade,
comfortable in hotels vanishing between counties. A traveler whose habits
fit the pattern of every unsolved torso from the last decade,
(26:53):
Emeric seemed to fit the bill. Five hundred and fifty
miles to the northwest of the Gunter Hotel Hell and
its room six thirty six in Opaso County, former Sheriff
Robert Bob Bailey was enjoying retirement, although the law enforcement
bugs still nipped at him. Bailey became officially retired only
(27:14):
about a month before Emerick did whatever it was he
did in that hotel room. Given the theorized nature of
the crime in San Antonio, had he been in office
in February of nineteen sixty five, its likely Bailey would
have been chomping at the bit to investigate Emeric for
his torso case, just as its likely authorities in San
(27:37):
Jacino County, about two hundred and forty miles to the
city of the Alamo's northeast. Lawman in New Mexico, as
well as the case of the brutal murder and mutilation
of school teacher Charles Cox was and still is unsolved
when he strayed from home, particularly on drinking binges. Emeric
(27:59):
was now to travel and stay in hotels, and Cox
was last seen leaving one. But because of a lack
of press coverage or interest, it seems the question of
whether Walter Audley Emerick could be responsible for the Elpaso,
Sanjacento or Fort Ben County Torso murders was never even
asked in the court of public opinion. Those puzzles, and
(28:23):
the question of what happened and to whom in Rooms
six thirty sixth of the Gunter remained just that. More
than sixty years later, had Emerick been the phantom that
haunted Texas law enforcement since nineteen fifty nine? Sheriff Bob
Bailey had once said that a man like that doesn't
just quit. Maybe he was right. Maybe he quit only
(28:46):
when he put a twenty two to his own head
in room five thirty six. Either way, Emeric took it
to the grave, and in San Antonio it remains a
ghost story because whatever happened in Room six thirty six
of the Sheraton Gunter Hotel, whatever body was cut apart
and carried out in that brown package, it remains six
(29:09):
decades later, one more name missing from the long cold
story of the Texas Torso murders. If you have any
information about the Fort Bend County Torso case of nineteen
sixty four, please contact the Sheriff's office there at two
eight one three four one four six sixty five. If
(29:32):
you have any information about Walter Audley Emerick or his victim,
please contact the San Antonio Police at two to one
zero two zero seven seven six three five. If you'd
like to join gon Cold's mission to shine a light
on unsolved homicides and missing persons cases, get the show
(29:53):
at free and have access to bonus content, you can
at Patreon dot com slash Gone Cold Podcast. You can
also support the show by leaving a five star rating
and written review on Apple Podcasts or wherever else you listen.
However you choose to support Gone Cold, we appreciate you.
(30:14):
Thanks for listening, y'all,
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