The problem with ultimately identifying the victim and bringing her killers to justice has been a complete failure of the law enforcement agency (the Walker County Sheriff's Office) responsible for investigating to bring any conclusion to the case.
Following our last article on the WCJD Case, ---the 2nd-most widely read and shared article in our blog's history---officials in Walker County scrambled to rush off a bone fragment to a DNA testing lab. It's not clear exactly what they were looking for, since her DNA has been on file for 20 years.
It was a moot point anyway, since the Sheriff's Office somehow managed to bungle the evidence and the lab was unable to extract any results.
Shortly after this latest fiasco, one of our readers agreed to file a formal request under the Texas Public Records Act to the Walker County Sheriff's Office: the purpose of which was to ascertain exactly how much effort this agency is putting into solving this case. Mostly the Department waived off all of the answers, however one response well summed up the matter. To the question of how many man-hours have actually been spent on this case, the Sheriff's Office replied that "an estimate of more than 100 man-hours have been spent investigating this case since 2015."
Think of it! Why, that's almost three 40-hour work-weeks in four years! And here we thought that they weren't doing anything...
Nonetheless, readers who feel concerned about this rather languorous approach to the case should (respectfully) express their opinions to Texas State Attorney-General Ken Paxton, whose office has a convenient online form for such matters. Mr. Paxton also has an account on Twitter. The State Attorney-General has the power, for example, to invite the intervention of the Texas Rangers or the FBI into the case.
Meanwhile, we've been continuing our own research into the matter, and while we still haven't come up with a positive identification for the victim, we have some strong circumstantial evidence now as to her whereabouts in 1980. We believe that she may have been living in the area in and around Trinity, Texas during at least the first half of the year.
We also believe that the night that she was killed, the Doe may have come to Huntsville from the Brazoria area: in particular the neighborhood highlighted on the map:
Anyone reading who recalls seeing a young woman like WCJD in either of these areas should report it either here, or by contacting the National Missing and Unidentified System:
I might be playing the devil's advocate here, but do you think there's not enough information to do more than 100 hours of work in three years? What is the current load of "hot" cases?
ReplyDeleteThat's a fair question. But there are two points to consider here. First, this case is a 'hot case' itself, by Walker County's own admission. This case was reopened and became an 'active investigation' in 2015. Secondly, there have been well over 100 man-hours expended by volunteers coming up with tips and plausible explanations, and just generally getting the word out. Walker County has an obligation to follow up on these leads---which they haven't been doing. It seems like the public volunteers are doing all the work on this case and getting no help or feedback from the authorities.
DeleteActually, a police department relying on public input wouldn't necessarily be such a bad thing: but the lack of transparency from WCSO has been an obstacle. When, for example, someone says: 'WCJD was a girl I knew named Susie X' and WCSO comes back with neither ruling Susie in or out because they never looked, just leaves everyone hanging not knowing whether it's a valid lead or not.
Thank you for the reply. I am physically far removed from the place, so I can't be of much use and have been reading Websleuths and unidentified wiki posts on this, and, as you can tell, don't know much. I certainly share in your frustration with the sheriff after reading your reply. Thank you to everyone involved on a volunteer basis. That you were able to trace her movements that much is a surprise to me. I wish you more responsive LE.
DeleteThank you. Actually, tracing her movements was just based on information that came from public tips, looking at some records, and some maps. At this point, we have a theory as to who killed her and why; we've passed that on to WCSO and after 8 months, they've done nothing with that information. We haven't named the killers for legal reasons. So far, we haven't identified the girl, but I think that we're close.
DeleteThe point here is that we're try to solve this case with or without WCSO's help. Honestly, though, I hope that by showing that we can make progress just with publicly-available information that it might shame the Sheriff's Office into putting more effort into the investigation---or at the very least put enough public pressure on them that they'll get involved. Because, like it or not, it's only 'theory' until the police or courts make an official statement.
The point here is that we're going to try to solve th