Carla Walker
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To get this episode of Forensic Tales ad-free, check us out at patreon.com slash forensic tales. Forensic Tales discusses topics that some listeners may find disturbing. The contents of this episode may not be suitable for everyone. Listener discretion is advised. The year was 1974 in Benbrook, Texas. The captain of the football team was taking his high school sweetheart to the Valentine's Day dance.

The gorgeous cheerleader was eager for an unforgettable evening. A perfect dress, a perfect night, the perfect couple. This sounds like the beginning of a Hollywood movie, but it's not. 17-year-old Carla Walker never made it home. Her story became an investigator's worst nightmare. A rape and murder with no suspects.

This is Forensic Tales, episode number 125, The Carla Walker Story. ♪♪

Welcome to Forensic Tales. I'm your host, Courtney Fretwell-Ariola. Forensic Tales is a weekly true crime podcast covering real, spine-tingling stories with a forensic science twist. Some cases have been solved with forensic science, while others have turned cold. Every remarkable story sends us a chilling reminder that not all stories have happy endings.

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In February 1974, 17-year-old Rodney McCoy was on top of the world. He was a senior at Western Hills High School in Benbrook, Texas, just a few months away from graduation. He was the star quarterback and captain of the school's football team. A popular jock who was dating a beautiful, standout cheerleader, 17-year-old Carla Walker.

Many would describe them as the cool kids on campus, the classic star quarterback with the beautiful cheerleader. Carla Walker, a junior at the time, was one of five children. Like her boyfriend Rodney, she was popular around school and made friends easily.

She was a star on the school's cheerleading squad and a standout tennis player. But she could also be tough and stubborn, despite only being 4'11 and barely 100 pounds soaking wet. After high school, she had dreams of going to college to become a veterinarian.

When Rodney and Carla first met, it was love at first sight. Rodney smiled, Carla smiled. Then a few months later, Rodney presented Carla with a promise ring. By 1974, they had been dating for a year. On February 17, 1974, Western Hills High School hosted its annual Valentine's Day dance.

This dance was a really big deal around campus. If you had a sweetheart, it was time to show them off at this dance. Rodney finished up his shift at the gas station earlier that day, then headed straight home to change clothes and get ready for the dance. He borrowed his mom's Ford LTD and drove over to Carla's parents' house to pick her up. He saw Carla standing in her powder blue dress with white ruffles.

That night, hundreds of high school kids crammed into the school's gymnasium for a night filled with dancing and fun. The theme that night? Love is a kaleidoscope. Some students went to the dance with a group of friends, while others, like Rodney and Carla, went to the dance as Valentine's Day dates.

After hours of dancing, the school's administrators slowly cleared out the dance floor. And one by one, students began leaving the gym for the night. Around 1 o'clock in the morning, Carla's parents heard a car crash into the curb just outside their front door. Seconds later, someone was pounding on the door.

When they opened it, they were surprised to see Rodney. Blood covered his face. And their daughter Carla wasn't with him. Rodney kept yelling, Mr. Walker, Mr. Walker, help me. They got her. They got her. Who, they asked. Who has who? Carla. They got Carla.

Carla's parents immediately picked up the phone and called the Fort Worth Police Department to report that something happened to their 17-year-old daughter. But Carla's father wasn't going to wait for the officers to show up. Instead, he grabbed his pistol and headed to where Rodney said Carla was abducted, a bowling alley just around the corner from the house.

But when he got to the bowling alley, he didn't find anything. The parking lot was dead quiet. There was no sign of Carla or anyone else. Carla's parents took Rodney to the hospital where he received a dozen stitches on his face. Several Fort Worth police officers met up with Rodney at the hospital. The first thing they asked him was what happened. What happened to Carla and who took her?

Rodney told the police officers that he and Carla, along with another couple, drove to the Taco Bell after the school dance. The Taco Bell fast food restaurant was a popular hangout spot for high school students on a Friday or Saturday night. He said that around 1230 a.m., he dropped the couple off at their car. Then he and Carla drove around for a little while, just the two of them.

He said Carla had to use the restroom, so they decided to stop at the bowling alley. After Carla used the restroom, they returned to Rodney's car where they started kissing. Moments later, Rodney said that a man opened the passenger side door and nearly knocked them to the ground. He said the man was holding a gun and hitting him across the face and head with it.

The man then took his gun, held it within inches of Rodney's head, and pulled the trigger three times. One, two, three. But all Rodney said he heard were three clicks. Nothing came out of the gun. Rodney told the officers that the man grabbed Carla and pulled her out of the car while still pistol-whipping him with the gun.

As blood flowed down his forehead and into his eyes, Carla screamed out to the attacker, stop hitting him. According to Rodney, Carla told the man that she would go with him if and only if he stopped hitting Rodney. As the man is dragging Carla away from the car, Rodney said Carla yelled at him to go get her dad.

That's the last thing he remembered, because after that, Rodney said he blacked out. Rodney told the police that he didn't remember how long he'd been out. He just remembered that when he finally came to, he looked around but didn't see Carla anywhere. He then got back in the car and drove straight to her parents' house. When the police asked him what the man looked like, he couldn't remember much.

He said the man was white, around 5'10", and about 175 pounds. He also said the man had short brown hair and wore cowboy boots. But that's all he could remember before blacking out. Fort Worth police officers immediately launched a massive search to find Carla or her abductor.

Because Carla was only a teenager, 17 years old, her case was considered a missing child investigation. According to the FBI, the first three hours are the most critical in child abductions. For example, 74% of kidnapped victims who are later found dead are killed within those first three hours. So as the hours ticked,

The need to find Carla intensified. The police brought in helicopters to conduct aerial searches of the area. They also searched for her on foot and on horseback. At Carla's high school, students and parents had a prayer vigil. When the police searched the bowling alley parking lot where Rodney said the man took Carla, they found a magazine belonging to a .22 caliber Rugal pistol.

If the magazine falls out, the gun won't fire with this particular gun. This piece of evidence seemed to match up with Rodney's story. He told the police that the man pointed the gun at his head and pulled the trigger three times, but nothing happened. But besides the .22 caliber magazine in the parking lot, the police didn't find any other evidence. Then, the hours quickly turned into days.

Almost two days into the search for Carla, the police got a massive break in the investigation. But it wasn't the news they hoped for. Carla's body was found in a ditch near Benbrook Lake, dead. Her body was dumped in a quiet area away from the main road. It was a spot roughly nine miles away from where she was kidnapped in that bowling alley parking lot.

When investigators arrived on the scene, Carla was lying on her back. Her killer ripped her clothes. Carla's neck was riddled with bruises. She also had deep cuts to her thighs and legs. Whatever happened to her, we know that she fought for her life. In the mid-1970s, Fort Worth, Texas had one of the most advanced crime labs in the entire state.

So the first thing investigators did was carefully photograph the entire scene. They looked for any type of forensic or physical evidence that could point them to her killer. They were careful to photograph and collect everything they possibly could. Fort Worth investigators were cautious to preserve the crime scene. Although they had one of the best crime labs in the state, they knew that forensic science was just in its early stages.

They knew about DNA and the potential for the suspects to leave behind their DNA, but they had no way of identifying them. They also knew about fingerprints. But back in the 1970s, it was very challenging for investigators to collect fingerprints and then use them to find a suspect. There was no national fingerprint database like there is today.

While crime scene investigators combed through the scene for evidence, Carla's body was transported to the medical examiner's office for an autopsy. But the autopsy didn't reveal much other than proving that someone had strangled her to death and was sexually assaulted. But the forensic pathologist couldn't determine how Carla had been strangled.

He believed someone could have either manually strangled her or her killer could have strangled her with some other type of ligature. When she got to the morgue, she was still wearing the blue dress that she wore to the Valentine's Day dance. The first thing Fort Worth investigators did to track down Carla's killer was to find who owned that .22 caliber pistol used in the attack.

Crime scene investigators had already found the gun's magazine in the parking lot, so the next thing they did was find out who owned that particular gun and was living in the same area. With some assistance from the FBI, Fort Worth police officers found that roughly 40 people in that area had purchased a .22 caliber Rugal pistol.

With this list of 40 people, detectives then knocked on every single one of their doors. They proceeded to interview every single person. Detectives even administered over 20 polygraph tests, but everyone who participated passed. No one that the police interviewed was considered a possible suspect.

This was heartbreaking news that left the police back at square one. With a lack of potential suspects, the police couldn't stop going back to Rodney McCoy, Carla's boyfriend who was with her that night. Although he provided them with his story about what happened that night, they couldn't shake their suspicions about him. First, there was the fact that he was the last person to see her alive.

Anytime you're the last person to see someone alive, you will be considered suspect number one. Second, the police thought it was strange that Rodney didn't go to the police right away that night. Instead of going straight to the police station, he went to Carla's parents' house. Then, then there was what Rodney said that night. They took Carla, not he took Carla.

According to Rodney, only one man attacked him and abducted Carla. So the police wondered why he would say they took Carla, they took Carla, instead of he took Carla, if it was only one person. The police also wondered if maybe Rodney and Carla fought that night. They wanted to know if they really had as much fun at the dance that night as Rodney claimed.

So they spoke with several high school students who saw Carla and Rodney at the dance. They interviewed the couple who went to the Taco Bell with them after the dance. But everyone had the same story. They all said that Rodney and Carla had a great time. They danced the night away. There wasn't any indication that they were fighting or having any problems.

Detectives also spoke with Carla's parents to learn more about their relationship. But Carla's parents said the same thing that their friends did. They adored Rodney. They loved him. They didn't think he would ever be capable of physically hurting her like that.

The Fort Worth Police Department offered up a $10,000 reward for any information about Carla's murder. Unfortunately, the money didn't generate any solid leads. After countless interviews, the police found themselves at a dead end with Rodney. The Fort Worth Police Department had several full-time detectives investigating Carla's murder for the next two months. At first, they were inundated with leads.

But as the weeks went by, the leads slowly dried up. And for the first eight weeks of the investigation, they didn't make a single arrest. That is, until they heard about Tommy Ray Neeland. This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. What are some of your self-care non-negotiables? Maybe you never skip leg day or therapy day.

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Visit BetterHelp.com slash tails to get 10% off your first month. That's BetterHelp, H-E-L-P dot com slash tails. Fort Worth detectives learned that police had arrested serial killer Tommy Ray Neeland after he confessed to killing two teenage hitchhikers in Oklahoma and another woman in Texas.

As punishment, he received 550 years in prison for one murder and two additional life sentences for the other two murders. At the time, he also faced trial in Fort Worth for the aggravated kidnapping of a teenage girl from Arlington. Detectives investigating Carla Walker's case wondered if Nealon could be Carla's killer.

Tommy's crimes were very similar. They had the same M.O. All women were abducted, sexually assaulted, and then murdered. The victims were also all around the same age. Detectives decided to bring Rodney McCoy to the police station with Tommy Ray Neeland. They had Rodney listen to an audio lineup with different men's voices, including Neeland's voice.

The idea was to have Rodney listen to the audio lineup to see if he could identify the man's voice who attacked him and abducted Carla. Since Rodney told the police that he didn't get a good look at the man, the police wanted to find out if he could recognize the voice instead. When Neeland opened his mouth, Rodney's ears perked up. He told the detectives, "'That is the guy that he heard that night. That's the guy.'"

Although Nealon had previously confessed to the other three murders, he denied having anything to do with Carla's murder. He told investigators that he was nowhere near Fort Worth that night, and he had no idea who Carla Walker was. Without any physical or forensic evidence tying him to Carla's murder, there wasn't much the Fort Worth police could do.

After a disappointing meeting with Tommy Ray Neeland, the police reached another dead end. Three long years passed until the police heard about Jimmy Dean Sasser. In 1977, Jimmy Dean Sasser from Paris, Texas, walked into a Tennessee police station and confessed to killing Carla three years earlier.

Police officers in Tennessee immediately picked up the phone and called the Fort Worth Police Department. Not only did Jimmy Dean Sasser confess to killing Carla, but he also provided the police with a detailed written statement on exactly how he did it. But there was one small detail. His written statement didn't match the crime scene.

His statement was filled with inconsistencies that didn't match the crime scene, like how he killed her or what he did with her body. Information that didn't line up with the autopsy report. He also couldn't answer many of the detectives' questions about what happened that night.

But despite his story not adding up, the police felt like they had enough for an arrest. They had the most critical piece of evidence, a full confession. A few months later, in 1978, Jimmy Dean Sasser was indicted for Carla's murder and was sent to jail. While in police custody, Sasser's mom came forward with some interesting information about her son.

According to his mother, Sasser had a lengthy history of getting drunk and then confessing to crimes he didn't commit. And not just petty crimes. He had a history of confessing to rapes, kidnappings, and even murder.

A few months later, Sasser recanted his confession and told the Fort Worth detectives that he had made it all up. He didn't murder Carla Walker. And he didn't know who did. He said he did it because he was depressed about his recent divorce and he had used cocaine when he walked into that Tennessee police station and confessed to Carla's murder.

Shortly after, Jimmy Dean Sasser was released from jail. He was never arrested again in connection to Carla's case. Now, three years later, the police found themselves back at square one again. As the years went by, detectives were moved off Carla's case and assigned new ones. And her file eventually ended up in the department's cold case division.

Under a dark cloud of suspicion, Rodney McCoy skipped college and left Fort Worth, Texas. He moved to the furthest place he could think of, Alaska. He tried moving on with his life while still dealing with his girlfriend's sudden and violent loss and dealing with the reality that some people, especially the police, still suspected him of Carla's murder.

Carla's case file sat in the cold case division for the next three decades. More than 30 years passed before investigators got any closer to finding Carla's killer. In 2005, the Fort Worth Police Department assigned a new detective to give a fresh set of eyes over Carla's case. Detective Sarah Waters.

The first thing Detective Waters did was look inside the evidence locker to see what evidence remained from the case. It had been over 30 years, but since Carla's case remained unsolved, there was a good chance the evidence was still preserved. As soon as she got into the evidence locker, she saw it. Carla's powder blue dress she wore the night she was murdered.

Even after all these years, the original investigators had neatly and safely preserved the dress in evidence. Detective Sarah Waters sent the dress to the crime lab to see if they could find any new evidence on it. She knew that DNA and forensic testing had come a long way since 1974.

By 2005, DNA testing was rapidly evolving and was being regularly used by law enforcement to solve cold cases. She also knew that Carla's killer had sexually assaulted her, so the chances of finding DNA through semen was also possible. So she hoped that new forensic testing could find something on the dress.

Technicians carefully swabbed the entire dress at the crime lab, looking for DNA that her killer might have left behind. After passing up and down the dress several times, a technician found a small stain that looked like a semen stain. To be sure, the lab swabbed the stain and submitted it for DNA testing.

The test revealed that the sample contained only a partial male DNA profile. It wasn't a complete profile. To put that into perspective, if a DNA profile is a full description of a person's appearance, a partial profile might only describe one of the person's traits. So a partial DNA profile doesn't give scientists the complete picture.

But getting a partial DNA profile isn't necessarily a bad thing. Investigators can use the partial sample to eliminate suspects. It just can't identify anyone. And that's exactly what Detective Sarah Waters did with that partial sample.

The department took the partial DNA profile found on Carla's dress and compared it to anyone who had been considered a possible suspect in the case. First, they compared it to Tommy Ray Neeland, the serial killer who confessed to killing three women and who was also brought in for questioning in Carla's case. Tommy Neeland's DNA didn't match the sample. He was cleared.

One by one, everyone once considered a suspect was eventually cleared. What seemed to be a massive break in the investigation ultimately didn't lead investigators to Carla's killer. All they had was a partial DNA profile, but they had no idea who the profile belonged to.

Ten years passed and nothing, no suspects, no arrests. Detective Sarah Waters was ready to retire from the police department. She had done everything she possibly could to solve Carla's case. But although she was moving on, she felt in her heart that at some point, some point down the road, new DNA technology would eventually solve this one.

In January 2018, now over four decades later, the police once again opened the case file. This time, they were faced with one primary concern. The possibility that after all of these years, Carla's killer might be dead. And if he was dead, they might not even find out who was responsible.

In 2018, investigators created a list of 83 potential suspects. The list contained names of ex-boyfriends, other guys who went to the same high school as Carla, guys who were at the Valentine's Day dance. It was a list of any and every name the police could think of that might have been involved, no matter how far they had to stretch their imaginations.

One by one, investigators tracked down every name on that list of 83 individuals. Not only did they sit down and talk with each person, but they also collected DNA samples from as many as they could. Naturally, they wanted to compare it with their potential DNA sample. But after an exhaustive search, all of the men were excluded by DNA.

Finding themselves stuck at another dead end, investigators came up with something different to try and generate new leads. They posted about the case on Facebook. The post about Carla's case got a lot of attention and reaction from the public.

Those who had never heard of Carla's case were now determined to help track down her killer. Those who knew about it were ecstatic that the police weren't giving up on it even over 40 years later. But one particular comment on the Facebook post caught the police department's attention. A woman commented on the Facebook post saying that she thought she knew who killed Carla.

She said it was a guy she used to live with, her ex-husband, Stephen Clare. The woman agreed to sit down with investigators, and she told them that she found a metal box inside their house one day. She said her ex-husband filled the box with everything about Carla Walker. Newspaper clippings about the case, her funeral papers, everything.

She also said that at the time of the murder, Stephen Clare was 17 years old and he lived down the street from Carla's parents' house. Believing that they had a solid lead, the police brought Stephen Clare in for questioning. Now 63 years old, he admitted to officers that yes, he did have a metal box like his ex-wife said.

But according to him, it wasn't what they thought. He said the box didn't just contain information about Carla's case, but it also had a lot of other stuff from his childhood, like funeral papers from both of his parents' funerals, as well as other newspaper articles from the area.

He told investigators that it was just a box from his childhood and it wasn't directly related to only Carla. He was just the type of person who liked to save stuff from his past and save stuff from his childhood. And since he was the same age as Carla and only lived down the street from her parents' house, he told the officers that he kept that stuff related to her case.

He told investigators that he had an alibi for the night of the murder. He claimed that he wasn't even living in the area at the time of Carla's murder. He had only once lived down the street. So, according to him, since he didn't live there at the time, he couldn't have done it. Instead of taking his word for it, the police got a DNA sample to compare it to the partial. Police jumped at the idea of testing his DNA.

But just like all the previous comparisons, he was ruled out. He was telling the truth. He was not Carla Walker's killer. Detectives decided to go back to an earlier theory they had in the case. Rodney McCoy, the boyfriend. They were still troubled that part of his story just didn't seem to add up.

According to the police, there was a 30 to 40 minute gap on the night Carla was murdered that is unaccounted for. Rodney told the police that he was blacked out for around five minutes before he came to and then drove to Carla's parents' house that night. But Carla's house was only a few minutes away from the bowling alley.

But according to the evidence and Rodney's story, Carla's abduction happened 30 to 40 minutes before he went to her parents' house. So if he was only out for around five minutes, what happened during that 30 to 40 minute time window? That's not the only thing the police were troubled with, even after all of these years. The most significant inconsistency was Rodney's story about the gun.

He told the police that Carla's killer had taken his gun, put it about two to three inches away from his head, and pulled the trigger three separate times. But according to the police, this was impossible. This particular gun isn't capable of that action. After one click, the magazine of the weapon fell out.

Investigators knew that because they found the gun's magazine in the parking lot. So if the magazine fell out after the first trigger pull, he wouldn't have been able to pull the trigger two more times. This meant that Rodney's claim that the guy pulled the trigger three separate times and nothing happened would have been impossible. Did Rodney lie?

Or was he just mistaken about that detail? In early 2020, the Oxygen television show The DNA of Murder with Paul Holes did an episode on Carla Walker's case. Paul Holes is a retired investigator up in Northern California who is most famous for his work in identifying Joseph James D'Angelo, a.k.a. the Golden State Killer.

He's also well known for being an expert in the field of genealogical DNA, the relatively new forensic technique that can identify suspects through their relatives. This type of forensic testing is costly, but the Oxygen Network agreed to pay over $18,000 to cover the cost of this type of testing.

The network arranged for Carla's dress and the rest of her clothes to be sent to a forensic lab in California. Because the original investigators in 1974 did such a careful job of preserving forensic evidence, her dress could be retested even four decades later. Fortunately, technicians found another semen sample.

Only this time, it wasn't on the dress. Instead, they found it on one of the bra straps. They were able to generate a complete male DNA profile from the sample, much more helpful than the earlier partial sample. They then took the sample and compared it against all the samples the police had collected over the years. They also uploaded the sample to CODIS, the National DNA Database.

For once, investigators felt like they were so close to identifying the killer. The wait must have been excruciating. Finally, after some time, the news came back. Not one hit. The profile didn't match any of the previously collected samples. And it didn't match anyone in CODIS.

It seemed like this case was destined to become yet another unsolved mystery. In an act of desperation, investigators turned to genealogy. If they couldn't identify the profile, the next best move would be to identify possible relatives. But as soon as they tried, investigators were hit with the tragic news.

The crime lab in California that found the semen sample on Carla's bra strap had used up the entire sample. They didn't leave anything behind. Whenever you test a DNA sample, you lose some of the sample. And this particular lab used up everything. They used the entire sample. And there wasn't anything left to try genealogy with.

But investigators still had one last shot. When the lab examined Carla's bra strap again, they found another DNA spot on it. The spot was badly degraded and it was a mixed sample. It contained parts of Carla's DNA mixed with another unknown male DNA.

Mixed DNA samples are challenging for investigators to test. And even if they are tested, the results aren't always as reliable as tests on pure DNA samples. Believing this was their last shot, they sent the mixed sample to a special forensics lab in Houston, Texas.

A young company called Othram Labs agreed to test the mixed sample to try and identify the unknown male contributor. Othram's CEO, David Middleman, believes that his lab can still analyze the tiniest of DNA profiles, including mixed samples, and then be able to create a full DNA profile.

Once they build a profile, they can conduct genealogical searches. In May 2020, police in Fort Worth, Texas sent the mixed DNA sample to Othram's lab. Then, then they waited. Finally, five weeks later, they got the hit they'd been searching for for decades.

Othram created a full DNA profile from the mixed sample and then used genealogical mapping to find a family name. They uploaded the sample into GEDmatch, an online service to compare DNA profiles. The database returned what years of investigations couldn't. A match to a name. McCurley.

When Othram told Fort Worth police the DNA sample belonged to someone from the McCurley family, they immediately recognized that name. When they looked at their suspect list, they saw Glenn Samuel McCurley listed as suspect number 22. The only problem was he died in 1972, two years before Carla was killed.

The next step was to determine if Glenn Samuel McCurley had any children or siblings. Investigators discovered that he had two brothers, but neither one of the brothers lived in Texas at the time. But he also had a son, Glenn Samuel McCurley Jr.,

Glenn Samuel McCurley Jr. lived in Fort Worth, Texas, back in 1974. He lived minutes away from that bowling alley. And the police had interviewed him shortly after Carla's murder because he owned a .22 caliber pistol, the same type of gun used in the murder. But when the police went to speak with him, he told them that his gun had been stolen.

And on top of that, he even passed a polygraph. So back in 1974, after passing the polygraph, the police had no choice but to clear him as a possible suspect. But now they wondered if they were wrong. Several Fort Worth police officers waited outside Glenn Samuel McCurley Jr.'s home three days later.

Once they got a chance, they went to the side of his house and collected several items from his trash can. They collected things that they thought might contain his DNA. They then sent the items to the lab for DNA testing. After several long, agonizing days of waiting for the test results, they finally got their long-awaited answer.

DNA test results confirmed that the DNA sample pulled from Carla's bra strap was a 100% perfect match. Glenn Samuel McCurley Jr. was Carla Walker's killer. When detectives interviewed McCurley and confronted him with the DNA evidence, he continued to deny having anything to do with her murder.

He once again claimed that he had his handgun stolen back in 1974, so he couldn't have done it. But the police had more than enough evidence to make an arrest. On September 21, 2020, Glenn Samuel McCurley Jr. was arrested with capital murder charges for killing and sexually assaulting Carla Walker 46 years earlier.

For almost five decades, he was right under the investigators' noses. He stayed in the Fort Worth area after the murder and lived what many described as a very normal life. After killing Carla, he went on to get married and even became a father.

In August 2021, 78-year-old McCurley entered a Tarrant County courtroom and pled guilty to Carla Walker's murder. For decades, he proclaimed his innocence, but now he finally told the truth. Maybe he wanted to finally do the right thing, or maybe he knew that the forensic evidence was too strong against him.

He was sentenced to life in prison in exchange for his guilty plea. Following the guilty plea, the Walker family has vowed to help other families impacted by cold cases. They do so by helping raise money to send evidence to be tested. The county's prosecution office has also promised to ramp up their genealogical testing to help solve other cold cases in the county.

They're also not ruling out the possibility that McCurley may be linked to other unsolved crimes in the area. Carla Walker's case would not have been solved if it weren't for the countless dedicated detectives who worked tirelessly on her case, starting from the first responding officers who were careful to document and preserve the evidence.

They knew that they didn't have the forensic technology they needed in the early 1970s. But they had the foresight to know that the technology could arrive in the future. And they were right. Over 40 years later, investigators were able to use DNA advances to finally link Glenn Samuel McCurley Jr. to Carla Walker.

Forensic scientists and investigators were finally able to bring closure to Carla's family. No matter the circumstances, no matter the obstacles, the investigators never gave up hope. To share your thoughts on the Carla Walker story, be sure to follow the show on Instagram and Facebook. To find out what I think about the case, sign up to become a patron at patreon.com slash forensic tales.

After each episode, I release a bonus episode where I share my personal thoughts and opinions about the case. To check out photos from the story, be sure to head to our website, ForensicTales.com. Don't forget to subscribe to Forensic Tales so you don't miss an episode. We release a new episode every Monday. If you love the show, consider leaving us a positive review or tell friends and family about us.

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