The Vanishing of Christine Starrine Byrd

In May of 1992, 42-year-old Christine “Starrine” Byrd vanished from her home in west Tyler, Texas. What began as a missing-person case soon turned into something far darker – and more disturbing – than anyone could have imagined.

Starrine was a beloved mother of four, a woman of faith whose home was always filled with music. She disappeared without a trace; the front door left open, food still cooking on the stove, pets unfed. The scene looked frozen in time, as if she had been interrupted mid-afternoon. Investigators suspected foul play almost immediately.

Then came a phone call. An anonymous man claimed her body could be found at Bellwood Lake. The resulting large-scale search turned up nothing. No remains, no evidence, no answers.

But Starrine wasn’t the only person in Tyler to disappear under mysterious circumstances around that time. Months earlier, eight-year-old Chad Choice had been abducted from his home. His case led to ransom demands, rumors of drug debts, and ultimately to a horrifying series of revelations implicating a young man named Patrick Horn.

Years later, Horn would be convicted of Chad’s kidnapping and murder. Behind bars, he began talking, and investigators realized that Starrine lived just a short distance from where Chad was buried. Informants claimed Starrine “knew too much.” Some said she may have witnessed something connected to the boy’s killing.

Though she was never found, and no charges were filed in her disappearance, Starrine’s daughters have never stopped fighting. Today, the case remains open — and so does the search for justice.

If you have any information about the disappearance of Starrine Byrd, please call the Tyler Police Department at [phone] or Tyler-Smith County Crime Stoppers at [phone].

Sources: The Tyler Morning Telegraph, The Tyler Courier-Times Telegraph, KETK News, KLTV News, Smith County District Attorney Press Statements, Patrick Horn v. Quarterman

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:04):
Killers don't just take lives, They reshape everything they left behind.
A quiet back road, a busy stretch of highway, a
house that once felt safe now a shrine to everything
that went wrong. Across Texas, deserts, fields and bayous keep
their secrets buried, but not forever. From the creators of

(00:26):
Gone Cold. Comes of Hell Texas True Crime, a podcast
about the state's most depraved killers and the scars they
left on every town, every family, every mile marker they touched.
Stories that ask one burning question, were there more victims?
Some folks aren't just from Hell, they'reo it. Of Hell

(00:51):
Texas True Crime coming soon. Subscribe wherever you listen to
podcasts Gone Cold. Podcasts may contain violent or graphics subject matter.
Listener discretion is advised. In nineteen ninety two, Tyler, Texas,

(01:36):
sat somewhere between a town and a city, still small
enough for neighbors to know each other by name, but
also big enough for strangers to slip through unnoticed. The
rose fields that had once earned it the name the
Rose Capital of America were disappearing for decades. The flat
stretches south of town along Old Jacksonville Highway, Bullard Road,

(02:00):
and Shiloh had been lined with neat rows of grafted
rose bushes, tended by families who'd made their living in
the nursery trade since the nineteen thirties. By the early nineties,
many of those growers had closed or sold out. The
town still held its annual rose festival each October, with

(02:21):
its floats, gowns, and rose covered crowns, but it all
felt more like tradition than livelihood. The big nurseries had
scaled back, hit first by rising land values and later
by drought, and the old farm land was giving way
to subdivisions, small auto shops and warehouses. The oil bust

(02:43):
of the nineteen eighties had left its mark. II. Tyler
had never been a boomtown like Odessa or Midland, but
the oil and gas fields that stretched through East Texas
had sustained whole families for generations. When prices collapsed, those
jobs vanished. Men who'd spent their lives in coveralls and

(03:04):
steel toed boots came home without paychecks, and the small
businesses that depended on oil field money folded behind them.
Nearing the end of the twentieth century, the city was
still trying to recover pawnshops dotted Broadway, old strip malls
sat half empty, and the promise of easy money through drugs,

(03:27):
hustling or petty crime started to look like the only
promise some people had left. The news in the spring
of nineteen ninety two carried a steady rhythm of unease,
break ins, small time hustles, bar brawls. The Butler College
community had grown up around the campus of a historically

(03:48):
black institution founded in nineteen oh five as East Texas Academy.
It became Butler College in nineteen twenty four, and later
Butler College and Seminary. Even after the school closed in
the nineteen seventies, the neighborhood kept its name and its pride.
By nineteen ninety two, it was a close knit part

(04:10):
of West Tyler, older homes, small churches, generations of family
who knew every street corner, But like much of the city,
it was feeling the strain. Tyler's homicide rate stayed modest,
but crack cocaine had taken root, and the police force
was stretched thin, juggling narcotics cases and domestic disturbance calls

(04:34):
that seemed to multiply every week. On the western edge
of town sat Pineburr Road, a narrow strip shaded by
pines and oaks. Houses there were close together but modest,
each with its own patch of yard and clothesline. People
kept to themselves, not out of coldness, but out of caution.

(04:56):
Doors stayed locked, blinds half drawn. Everyone knew that the
wrong car turning into the neighborhood could mean trouble. At
the twenty four hundred block of West Pineburg Road in
West Tyler lived forty two year old Christine Starene Bird
born July sixteenth, nineteen forty nine, in Tyler, to Ernest

(05:20):
Joe Wade and Staris Burger Wade. To everyone who knew her,
she was simply Starrene, a devoted mother of four, a
lifelong East Texan, and the kind of woman whose warmth
filled a room before she even spoke. Her faith ran deep,
her laughter carried, and she was almost always singing. She

(05:43):
kept a tidy home, worked hard, and doated on her
two daughters, Shalina and Shalitha. In photographs, her shoulder length
hair framed a radiant smile that never seemed forced. Her
daughters remembered her as gentle but firm, the sword of
mother who double checked the locks, kept a watchful eye

(06:04):
on her girls, and always made sure to be home
before dark. On Friday May twenty second, nineteen ninety two,
Starrene spent most of the day with Shalina, enjoying some
mother daughter time. Shalina later remembered her mother as light
hearted that day, relaxed, cheerful, and in good spirits. There

(06:26):
was nothing to suggest that anything was wrong. The next morning,
a family friend who lived near the Saint Louis Special
Education School on Walton Drive, caught sight of Starrene riding
in a gray car with a man she didn't recognize.
It struck her as odd, but the moment passed quickly.

(06:47):
That fleeting glimpse would become the last confirmed sighting of
Starrene alive. Later, it would be documented that Starrene had
been wearing a yellow shirt, blue denim shorts, and roughly
twenty five thousand dollars worth of jewelry, a diamond encrusted bracelet,
two diamond rings, and a diamond pen. When Selena returned

(07:11):
to her mother's house that Sunday, the scene waiting for
her didn't make sense. The front door stood open, several
windows were raised, and food was still cooking on the
stove long past the point it should have been. Laundry
swayed quietly on the line in the backyard. It was
as if time itself had stopped. Mid afternoon, inside, the

(07:36):
family's cat and dog waited, hungry and restless. Selena felt
it immediately, a kind of unease that settles deep into
her chest when something that was supposed to be ordinary
is anything. But her mother never left food unattended, never
left doors unlocked, and never went anywhere without checking on

(07:58):
the animals. First Starreen worried about safety, especially in that neighborhood.
The open door, the forgotten chores, the absence, none of
it fit. Near the entryway, Selena noticed a small dent
in the wood, as if someone had struck it with
a fist or a hard object. She tried to reason

(08:21):
with herself, maybe her mother had gone to visit a friend,
maybe she'd just stepped out for a bit. But as
the hours passed and the house stayed quiet, hope began
to feel heavier than fear. Selena kept returning over the
next day, each time expecting to see lights on or

(08:41):
hear her mother's voice, but nothing changed. As the days
went on, that fragile hope began to unravel. Starren wasn't
answering the phone, and she hadn't shown up at work
or stopped by any of her friend's houses. On Wednesday,
Shalina went to the Tyler Police Department and filed an

(09:04):
official missing person report. The case landed on the desk
of Detective Bill Horton under the supervision of Lieutenant Charles Chandler.
Chandler later told reporters that foul play was suspected from
the beginning, but there was no solid proof that Staarren
had been attacked or abducted. That evening, the first notices

(09:27):
went out to local media, describing her as a forty
two year old black female, about five foot two, one
hundred and sixty pounds, with shoulder lengthd hair and brown eyes.
For several days, the investigations stayed small. Police checked with neighbors,
family members, and local hospitals. There were no credit card transactions,

(09:50):
no bank account activity, and no sightings. Then around two
thirty pm one afternoon, Shalna Wade picked up the phone
to a man's voice. He said her mother's body could
be found at Bellwood Lake, then hung up without giving
his name. Lake Bellwood sits just west of Tyler's city limits,

(10:14):
a shallow, man made reservoir on Indian Creek, ringed by
pine and oak trees, cattails, and red East Texas clay.
It covers roughly one hundred and sixty acres, fed by
creeks running down from higher ground north of Highway sixty four.
Deputies and divers described the area as heavily wooded, thick

(10:37):
with brush and fallen trees. Along the shoreline, locals fished
for bass and catfish there by day. The murky water
made it an ideal place to hide something or some one.
The call was enough to set a full scale search
in motion. By three o'clock, Tyler Police, the Smith County

(10:59):
Sheriff's Mounted Search team, and the Lake Patrol Unit had
converged on the body of water. East Texas Medical Center's
Air one helicopter circled overhead, scanning the tree line and
shoreline as deputies moved through the brush on horseback. Starrene's
family came out to watch the search unfold from the roadside.

(11:22):
They waded through the evening as officers combed the woods,
the lake's edge, and the trails leading back toward town,
but as darkness fell around nine thirty PM, nothing had
been found. Crews suspended operations until the following morning. A

(11:52):
week after forty two year old Starrene Bird vanished on
Saturday May thirtieth, nineteen ninety two, and the day following
an ominous call that claimed she could be found at
Bellwood Lake, a search had grown into a large scale operation.
After more than twenty hours of continuous effort, the Sheriff's

(12:14):
Department deployed its mobile command center while Sergeant Greg Binkley
oversaw teams working the area around the lake. Divers stood by,
ready to enter the water if needed. By early afternoon,
with no results and no new evidence to guide them,
Binkley ended the active search, returning the investigation to its

(12:36):
earlier status until fresh information surfaced. Searchers on land came
across a pair of blue jean shorts and a yellow shirt,
clothing that matched the description of what Staren had last
been seen wearing. Investigators noted that the items could not
be definitively linked to her, but also could not be

(12:58):
dismissed as unrelay. The garments were taken into custody and
preserved as potential evidence. The next day Sunday, May thirty, first,
the search shifted to the water. Nine divers from the
area Law Enforcement Rescue Team or ALERT, entered the lake
under the supervision of the Smith County Game Warden. The

(13:22):
water was dark and nearly opaque, visibility close to zero.
Divers focused on the spillway and the boat lodge, areas
locals said could easily conceal something weighted down. After more
than four hours in the water, the dive team surfaced
empty handed. The operation had been based on a promising lead,

(13:46):
and crews had thoroughly examined all accessible areas of the shoreline,
concentrating on sections where the water ranged from six to
ten feet deep. Despite the exhaustive sweep, there was nothing.
By Monday, June first, the formal search was over. Weeks
went by without a single lead. Investigators suspected foul play,

(14:10):
but had no evidence to prove it. For Starrene's daughters,
the waiting was unbearable. They printed flyers and covered grocery stores,
bus stops, and telephone polls across Tyler, hoping someone might
come forward. They reached out to friends in nearby towns,
chasing any possible tip. The community buzzed with rumors, some

(14:35):
pointing to drug activity, others to personal disputes, but the
sisters dismissed them all. They knew their mother, and they
knew she would never have simply walked away. Summer gave
way to fall, then winter, and the silence never broke.
The search had long faded, and Starrene's case slipped into

(14:57):
the growing stack of unsolved disappearances gathering dust in the
Tyler Police Department's files. The years moved forward, but her
investigation did not. Advances in forensic technologies came and went
DNA testing, computerized records, but none of it touched her case.

(15:18):
The file held nothing new to chase. Her case was
entered into state and national databases, tagged as an endangered
missing person, but in truth, she had become another forgotten
face in a folder no one opened anymore. Starne's house
stood less than a mile from Sunnyside Drive, a detail

(15:41):
that seemed meaningless at the time. No one recognized it
as a clue. Not then, but years later, when the
truth about what happened on that quiet street began to surface,
the proximity would take on a chilling significance. What once
looked like coincidence was in hindsight, a thread connecting her

(16:03):
disappearance to one of Tyler's darkest crimes. In October nineteen
ninety one, seven months before Starren vanished, eight year old
Earnest Chadwick choice known to everyone in Tyler, Texas. As
Chad vanished from his family's home on West Oakwood Street

(16:24):
one morning. They noticed that Chad was gone, his bed empty,
and there was no sign of where he had gone
or how he'd left the house. His disappearance shocked the
community and left a quiet unease that lingered. At first,
the case was treated as a possible runaway. There were

(16:44):
no signs of forced entry, no struggle, and nothing that
immediately pointed the foul play. Investigators noted that Chad's older
sister had reported her house keys missing the day before
the disappearance. She remembered leaving them by the back door
of the family's home. Two days after he disappeared, everything changed.

(17:07):
On October fifteenth, nineteen ninety one, Chad's uncle, Greg Sterling,
a local funeral director, received a letter at his business
demanding a ten thousand dollars ransom for the boy's safe return.
Following the instructions in the note, the family attempted to
deliver the money at a bus station, but no one

(17:29):
ever appeared to collect it. After the failed ransom drop
at the bus station, the investigation into Chad Choice's disappearance
began to unravel in multiple directions, each one more frustrating
than the last. Soon after, an anonymous caller told the
family that Chad had been abducted to settle a drug

(17:50):
debt allegedly owed by Greg Sterling to three Columbian traffickers.
On the surface, the Sterling family appeared well off. Greg
was a local funeral director respected in the community, but
behind the scenes his business was faltering under mounting debt
and financial strain. Sterling publicly denied owing money to anyone

(18:15):
involved in drugs, and at first investigators treated the supposed
connection as nothing more than rumor. Tyler police and the
FBI started working together, inspecting the ransom note for fingerprints
and searching for any trace of the writer. The letter
was handwritten, and investigators noted certain phrases that suggested the

(18:38):
writer was familiar with the Sterling family. Still, nothing definitive
came from forensic testing. The phone call about the Columbian
drug dealers was traced, but it led nowhere. Every lead
seemed to be a dead end. Days turned into weeks.
The Choice family waited by the phone, praying for another

(19:01):
call that never came. Law enforcement canvassed neighborhoods, distributed flyers,
and interviewed anyone who might have seen something. Neighbors, classmates,
even employees at the funeral home. No one had. There
were no witnesses, no vehicle description, and no sign of Chad.

(19:24):
By November, the case was growing cold, leeds had dried up,
and the story that once filled headlines was fading from
the front page. Investigators still believed Chad had been abducted,
but with no credible suspects or sightings, they were working blind.
Then quietly, a new theory began to take shape. Detectives

(19:48):
started hearing the same name from multiple sources, Patrick Horn.
At just seventeen, Horn was already known around West Tyler
as volatile and street smart, a teenager who ran with
people involved in drugs and small time crime. He was
questioned as he had been at the Choice home the

(20:10):
day before the kidnapping, spending time with Chad's older brother,
his close friend. As investigators dug deeper, they discovered that
Horn had rumored ties to a group of Colombian drug
traffickers operating in East Texas, men known by the names
Paco Junior and Carlos. If Chad's uncle did owe drug money,

(20:34):
perhaps the debt was large enough that the traffickers wanted collateral.
It might explain an eight year old boy's disappearance, but
there's nothing publicly released that solidly backs up the theory. Efforts
to find Chad anyway led nowhere. Investigators pursued hundreds of tips,

(20:55):
but each one ended in frustration. The national television program
America's Most Wanted aired a segment on his disappearance, sparking
a wave of reported sightings across Texas and beyond, yet
none brought Chad home. On October thirteenth, nineteen ninety two,

(21:24):
the one year anniversary of Chad Choice's disappearance, hope briefly
flickered again. Chad's mother discovered a note tucked beneath the
passenger side windshield wiper of her car, demanding a six
thousand dollars ransom and claiming that her son was still
alive and could be returned if the money was paid.

(21:45):
The letter was immediately turned over to police, but Like
every lead before it, it led nowhere. For years, no
one knew exactly what had happened. Chad's family kept Hope alive,
hosting flyers, giving interviews, and waiting for news, but there
was never any true sign that Chad was still alive.

(22:09):
The case grew cold, collecting dust in the Tyler, Texas
Police Department's files as new crimes and tragedies replaced the
old ones. Then, in nineteen ninety four, Patrick Horn's criminal
life caught up with them. On October fifth, he took
part in the carjacking and murder of eighty year old J. C. Levisar,

(22:31):
a beloved Tyler fruit vendor. Five days later, federal agents
arrested him for a series of bank and credit union
robberies across East Texas. By early nineteen ninety five, Horn
began making deals to lessen his time behind bars. In March,
he pleaded guilty to federal carjacking charges in the Levesar

(22:54):
case and promised to cooperate with investigators. Less than two
weeks later, just before testifying before a Smith County grand jury,
he entered additional guilty pleas for aggravated robbery in the
Levisar killing. And for another at the United Federal Heritage
Credit Union. He drew a life sentence for the murder

(23:16):
and ten more years for the robbery. That November, Horn
testified against one of his old crime partners, helping convict
him of capital murder. By the end of nineteen ninety five,
Horn was already serving life in prison, a young man
whose violent trail had left an old man dead and

(23:37):
a community shaken. While behind bars, he started to talk more.
During interviews with federal agents. Horn began dropping hints that
he knew what had happened to Chad Choice. In October
nineteen ninety five, four years after the boy vanished, a
small human skull appeared on Greg Sterling's port, accompanied by

(24:01):
a note referencing an unpaid debt and ending with a
chilling line, you only paid part, so here is part.
Forensic testing confirmed the skull belonged to Chad. Then, on
April fifth, nineteen ninety six, while still in the Smith
County jail, Horn received a package containing human bones and

(24:23):
a typewritten note referencing Chad Choice. The message was cryptic
but clear someone was taunting him, or perhaps trying to
shift the blame. It wasn't until May nineteen ninety six
that Patrick Horn finally gave a full statement. He told
investigators that drug dealers had forced him to steal the

(24:46):
house keys so they could kidnap Chad and use him
as leverage to collect what Greg Sterling owed. According to
his account, Chad was taken from his bed using the
stolen keys, shot shortly afterward, and buried behind Horn's family
residence on the four hundred block of Sunnyside Drive. When

(25:08):
the ransom schemes failed, Horn ordered the skull to be
dug up and delivered as a grotesque warning. On May
thirty first, nineteen ninety six, Horn led investigators to a
shallow grave on Sunnyside Drive. Inside, searchers found human bones
wrapped in a bloodstained blanket, along with spent bullet casings

(25:30):
and the stolen keys to the Choice residence. In June
nineteen ninety six, Keithan Horn, Patrick's younger brother, told FBI
agents about his role in the events that had haunted
Tyler for years. He was only fifteen years old in
nineteen ninety one when Patrick first asked him to dig

(25:51):
a shallow hole near the family's doghouse. Patrick never said
why he needed it, and Keithan never asked. It wasn't
until years later that he realized he had unknowingly helped
bury an eight year old boy. Keithan told investigators that
in nineteen ninety one he had dug the grave behind

(26:12):
their family's home at Patrick's request. Keithan told investigators about
digging the hole at Patrick's request, then in nineteen ninety five,
again following his brother's instructions, he dug up the skull,
cleaned it, and placed it on the steps of Greg
Sterling's business, the funeral Home, along with a ransom note.

(26:34):
He also admitted that he later packaged the human bones
sent to Patrick in jail and had a friend mail
the package, completing a gruesome series of acts that confirmed
what investigators had long suspected. Police confirmed through DNA and
forensic testing that the bones recovered from the Sunnyside Drive

(26:55):
property were indeed those of Chad, finally revealing the truth.
Patrick Horn was indicted for capital murder and went to
trial in nineteen ninety nine. Prosecutors painted him as the
ringleader of a kidnapping for ransom plot that ended in execution.
They showed how he orchestrated the abduction at just seventeen

(27:18):
years old, leveraged fear for money and shifted his stories
blaming Columbian traffickers before finally implicating himself. The defense argued
that Horn exaggerated his role and that the case hinged
too heavily on his confession. The jury was not swayed.

(27:38):
After days of testimony, Patrick Horn was convicted of the
capital murder of Chad Choice and sentenced to death. The
Choice family continued to endure suffering in the twelve years
that followed. After Chad's remains were recovered in nineteen ninety six,
they were entered into evidence as part of Patrick Horn's

(27:59):
capital murder case. Because the case involved homicide, the remains
came under the jurisdiction of the Smith County District Court
and the Medical Examiner's Office, becoming part of the official
court record. Once Horn's conviction was finalized, the remains could
not be released for burial without proper authorization and after

(28:21):
certain appeals had been filed. Under Texas law, Horn's signature
was required because the remains were considered evidentiary property. In
his own case, it was a legal technicality he exploited
to maintain control and to continue inflicting pain on the
Choice family from behind bars. Despite serving federal life sentences

(28:46):
and a state death sentence, Horn reportedly refused to sign
the waiver that would have allowed Chad's remains to be released.
For years, the Choice family was forced to wait, unable
to bury their son. Finally, in early two thousand and three,
Smith County Judge Cynthia Kent signed an order authorizing the

(29:07):
release of the remains without Horn's consent. Twelve years after
Chad's disappearance, the family was at last able to lay
him to rest in Tyler soil. Also in two thousand
and three, Starrene Byrd's case came roaring back. On April
twenty second of that year, the attorney Jack Skeene Junior,

(29:30):
had confirmed Patrick Horn was and always had been, the
prime suspect in Starrene's disappearance. Court records from Horn's nineteen
ninety nine trial showed that the FBI had questioned him
about her case but received no cooperation. Skeen announced a
joint meeting with the FBI and Tyler Police to review

(29:53):
evidence and plan new interviews. He called it an investigative
strategy to pursue Lee and locate Starrene's remains. Demitra Bradley,
Starrene's sister, said her family has consistently believed Horn was
involved in her disappearance and murder. Their homes shared the

(30:15):
same subdivision, only a one minute drive apart. Her sister
said she may have witnessed something pertaining to Chad's murder.
Demitra believes she knew they had the little boy. Information
on the streets surfaced alleging Horn and two fellow drug dealers,
Junior and Carlos, cut Starrene up because she knew too much.

(30:39):
Demitra said people familiar with crack cocaine traffickers in the
Butler College neighborhood gave police such information years ago, but
the tips were not taken seriously. Even though Horn continued
to insist that others had been involved in Chad's murder,
investigators never found them. The rumors of Columbian traffickers faded

(31:01):
into myth after an article came out in the Paper.
Authorities had received tips suggesting Starrene's body had been moved
more than once. They also identified a second suspect, Christopher Wells,
then twenty six, a convicted murderer and Horn's partner in
several robberies. Both men were already serving life terms. After

(31:27):
that brief surge of attention, the trail went cold once again.
Starrene Bird would be seventy six years old today. She
vanished in broad daylight in a neighborhood where everyone seemed
to know everyone, and her daughters have never stopped asking
why the Tyler Police Department still lists her disappearance as

(31:51):
an open investigation. If you have any information about the
disappearance of Christine Starring, please call the Tyler Police Department
at nine zero three five three one one thousand or
the Tyler Smith County Crime Stoppers at nine zero three

(32:11):
five nine seven two eight three three. If you'd like
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(32:32):
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