Lovers Lane Murders
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A passion-filled area of the woods where lovers come to love. As police approach a particular car, they notice something weird. A golf club and golf balls are forming an arrow in the middle of the woods. Officers follow the makeshift sign to discover the body of a young female victim. Naked, hands tied, and throat slit.

This is Forensic Tales, episode number 90, Lovers Laying Murders. ♪♪ ♪♪

Welcome to Forensic Tales. I'm your host, Courtney Fretwell. 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.

If you're interested in supporting the show, getting early access to weekly episodes, bonus material, ad-free episodes, merchandise, and much more, consider visiting our Patreon page at patreon.com slash forensic tales.

Before we get into this week's episode, I want to give a huge shout out and thank you to this week's newest patron of the show, Ramon B. Thank you so much. Another great way you can help support Forensic Tales is by leaving us a positive rating with a review or telling friends and family who love true crime about us. Now, let's jump right into this week's case.

Hey, everyone. I've got some big news to announce before we get into the episode. As some of you already know, my new husband, Tony, and I officially tied the knot together on September 4th.

I know it sounds a little bit cliche, but it was truly the perfect wedding day. After a year's postponement, thanks to COVID-19, it felt incredible and just a really special for us to finally have our wedding happen. And it happened better than we ever could have dreamed possible.

Of course, if I was being honest, we did have a couple of hiccups in the days leading up to the wedding, like a emergency vet trip with our dog Kona. But what was most important was that our wedding day was absolutely perfect. And don't worry, Kona is completely healthy. So if you see some of our wedding pictures, you'll see her little red cast on her foot, but she's okay now.

We also just returned from our mini honeymoon in Cabo San Lucas. Tony and I loved to go down to Mexico. It was relaxing. It was fun. Even with Hurricane Olaf, me forgetting my immigration papers at the airport, it was still a really wonderful time for us. But to be honest, between the wedding planning, the wedding itself, traveling international,

It feels really, really good to just be back at home and back into our lives that we've built together. So the case we're covering this week is one of the most notorious unsolved cases to come out of the state of Texas. A case dubbed Lovers Lane Murders.

It was the end of summer in Texas. On Wednesday, August 22, 1990, 23-year-old Cheryl Henry and her boyfriend, 21-year-old Andy Atkinson, drove together to a wooded area of West Houston near Eldridge and Enclave Parkway, a spot known to locals in Houston as, quote, Lover's Lane.

This area gained the nickname Lovers Lane because, well, as the name suggests, it's a popular spot for young people to go, hang out, make out, and just do what young people in love do. Cheryl and Andy were those people, and they were both young and in love.

Andy was introduced to Cheryl through mutual friends a couple weeks earlier. And from the moment their friends introduced them, they hit it off. They got along. They had fun together. They just wanted to spend as much time as possible that summer. Earlier that night, the couple met up with Cheryl's younger sister, Shane, and her boyfriend.

The four of them went on to a double date at Bayou Mama's Nightclub, a popular Houston nightclub back in the 90s. The foursome hung out at the club until around 10.45 p.m. At that time, they decided that they were done for the night and wanted to go home. At the nightclub, Cheryl gave her sister a kiss and a hug goodbye. She told Shane that she would hang out with Andy for a little bit longer that night.

and said that she would see her when she got home. Then around 10.45 to 11 p.m., Cheryl and Andy got into a car together and drove down to Lover's Lane. That was the last time that anyone saw Andy or Cheryl alive. Cheryl's sister, Shane, woke up the following morning and noticed that her older sister still hadn't returned home.

This realization concerned Shane because while her older sister was 23 years old, she came home every single night. And if she did stay out longer than she told her, well, she would have at least said when she was going to be home. It wasn't like her older sister to stay out all night and not come home. And it was also alarming because Shane knew that her sister had work that morning, but failed to show up for her shift.

Andy's family also became concerned when he didn't return home either and didn't show up to work that day. After searching for a couple of hours, both families decided to contact the local Houston police. Shortly after the families contacted the police, a Houston patrol officer spotted Andy's white Honda Civic parked in the 1300 block of Enclave, Lovers Lane, the spot where the couple drove out to the night before.

When the patrol officer ran the car's license plate, right away he realized that the Honda Civic belonged to a recently reported missing person, Andy. The patrol officer immediately called in backup, and it was clear that something terrible had happened to Cheryl and Andy.

Police officers found Cheryl's purse and shoes in front of the passenger seats inside of the car. The windows were rolled down and the keys were still in the car's ignition, but no sign of the couple. But more disturbing than that, the police also found traces of fresh blood inside of the car. It was clear that the couple did not voluntarily leave that car.

The police immediately called in search and rescue dogs to help search the wooded area. They were looking for any sign of the couple or clues that might help the investigation. After exploring the area for a few hours, the search dogs make a discovery just before midnight. The search dogs led police officers to an area just about 200 yards away from Andy's car.

At this spot, the police found a golf club and three golf balls, which, of course, seemed to be completely out of place for this area and suggested to investigators the balls and club were intentionally put there. The golf club appeared to be intentionally pointing to a cedar fence lying on the ground, almost like an arrow.

And when the investigators lifted the cedar fence, they found Cheryl's body. Cheryl was found naked with her hands tied behind her back with a hemp rope. Her throat had been slashed at least three separate times with a knife. There was also evidence that she had been sexually assaulted. The police recovered her clothes and a $20 bill not too far from where her body was discovered.

Now, the location of Cheryl's body suggested to the police that her killer attempted to cover up her body by placing the cedar fence over her. Although it's not entirely clear what the golf ball and golf clubs symbolized, investigators theorized that they may have been markers to her body's location.

The Houston police had the terrible task of notifying Cheryl's family and friends that she was no longer missing. Instead, she was brutally murdered. The next day, the police found Andy. Andy's body had been tied to a tree not too far from where Cheryl's body was discovered, about 100 yards away. He was sitting upright with his back resting against the tree.

Like Cheryl, Andy's hands were tied behind his back, around the tree, and his throat had been slashed. But the injuries to Andy's neck were far more severe than Cheryl's. The slashes to his throat were so bad and so deep that the wounds nearly decapitated him.

Unlike Cheryl, Andy was fully dressed. He was wearing the same clothes he was last seen wearing at the nightclub two nights before. What was interesting to investigators was that Andy's wallet and money were still inside of his front pocket.

Whoever killed him and killed Cheryl didn't seem to take anything of value from any of them, which told investigators that the motive of this crime didn't appear to be robbery. The motive appeared to be far more sinister. Investigators collected DNA and other trace evidence at the crime scene.

Especially since Cheryl had been sexually assaulted, the likelihood of collecting DNA evidence from the perpetrator would be relatively high. It's hard to commit a sexual assault and not leave behind any identifying biological or forensic evidence. The police profiled the DNA at a DNA lab founded at Baylor College of Medicine.

At the time, one of the country's best crime labs. Once they profiled the DNA, they entered it into Texas' combined DNA indexing system. Once the profile uploaded the sample, the program would compare it to every known DNA profile in the system. This index comparison was the investigators' first real shot at identifying the killer.

But when they ran the DNA profile through the system, the police didn't get a hit. The sample didn't appear to match any known offenders in the system, which meant that finding a possible suspect in the murders was going to be difficult.

Over the first couple of weeks and months, a dozen possible suspects in the murders emerged. But as quickly as the suspects emerged, the police cleared them. The DNA did not match. So Houston police stayed busy tracking down every credible tip that came into their office. But the tips led nowhere.

The families and friends of both Cheryl and Andy were left heartbroken and puzzled about who could do something like this. Who out there in the world was capable of committing a crime like this, especially to people like Cheryl and Andy? Neither one of them had any enemies or even knew anyone in their lives who would want them dead.

And what was even more troubling was just how brutal the murders were, starting with Cheryl. On top of being sexually assaulted, her throat was slit at least three separate times by her killer. Slitting someone's throat is an incredibly up-close and personal murder. The perpetrator must have had complete physical control over Cheryl to commit this type of murder.

Then you have her boyfriend, Andy. The killer cut his throat so bad that his head was nearly decapitated. This type of injury suggests that their murders were some sort of rage killing.

It's one thing to slit someone's throat, but it's an entirely different story to cut someone's throat so severely that it nearly takes their head off from the rest of their body. That is a rage killing if you ask me. And it also means that these murders took some time. This offender had enough time to subdue both Cheryl and Andy, who are both adults, and

probably by catching them by surprise while they sat in Andy's car, then drag them out of the vehicle, tie both of them up, sexually assault Cheryl, and then kill both of them. So this crime didn't just happen within minutes. These murders likely took some time, especially when it comes to the injuries to Andy's neck.

So this begs the question, was this offender familiar with the area? Generally speaking, this part of Enclave Parkway and Eldridge is quiet. It's secluded. This makes for a really good make-out Lovers Lane area.

But to me, this suggests that whoever this individual is had some sort of familiarity with the area. Or they at least had some kind of level of confidence to commit these crimes, these murders, and get away with it. And that's exactly what happened.

For the next several years, the murders remained unsolved. Nobody knew who killed Cheryl and Andy, and eventually, the investigation turned cold. The next big break in the investigation didn't happen until years later, 2001.

In March 2001, Houston police received a chilling letter nearly 10 years after someone killed Cheryl and Andy. The letter had been postmarked in Houston, Texas, and was written in big block letters. It read, quote, If you want to know who killed C. Henry and A. Atkinson, it will cost $100,000.

The note instructed the police to reply to the author in the classifieds section of the newspaper on March 12th. The letter ended by threatening the police that if they didn't comply with these instructions, a quote, lawyer would be involved. A little unusual that the author decided to threaten the police with a lawyer after they basically just tried to extort law enforcement.

But regardless, the Houston police agreed that this was in their best interest to play along if they wanted to find out if this person was telling the truth and if they did have some inside knowledge about the case. So as instructed in the letter, Houston police responded to the letter's author in the classified section of the Houston Chronicle on March 12th.

they told the person that they were willing to work with them to get more information about the murders. They even left a phone number for this individual to call, and they told them that they wanted to be contacted. Initially, Houston police felt pretty confident that whoever wrote the letter would contact the police. They would call this dedicated phone number.

whether or not it was the actual person responsible for the murders. It seemed unlikely that a person would take the time to write such a letter all of these years later, 10 years later, and then never make contact with law enforcement again. But that's what happened here.

The police, after they responded to the letter, the police didn't get a phone call. In fact, they never heard from this person again. After the letter was mailed in, they never contacted the Houston police. Besides the letter itself, one of the things that struck the police as odd was the letter's timing.

It had been nearly 10 years since someone killed Cheryl and Andy. And because the case turned cold, the investigation wasn't receiving really any type of media attention.

Many of the investigators who were once assigned to the murders moved on to other cases, and the investigation was in the hands of cold case investigators. To be honest, no one was really talking about the case, at least not publicly or talking about it in the media. When the Houston police received this letter, the last known media publication about the murders was in September of 2000.

So there wasn't really any reason for the letter to surface at the time that it did. It appears now that whoever wrote the letter has no intention of coming forward to the police. Since the letter arrived back in 2001, no one has claimed to have written the note, nor has anyone come forward with any information about the letter.

Since then, Houston police have released images of the letter and the contents, hoping that someone will recognize the handwriting and come forward. Even if the letter's author didn't kill Cheryl and Andy, this person could at least be officially ruled out as a possible suspect, or if they did commit the murders, someone could be held accountable.

There's also the real credible possibility that the letter was a hoax, that whoever wrote it didn't commit the murders and had no real knowledge about who did. Sometimes it's hard to imagine why someone would do something like that. Write a letter pretending to have inside knowledge to a murder and

But we see this far too often. It's not uncommon for people to have nothing to do with a crime and then to pretend as if they do, especially when it comes to big cases like the Lovers Lane murders, whether they're seeking fame or just want some sort of attention. There are people out there who will implant themselves in crimes and in murders they did not commit.

And sometimes they do it simply to get the thrill out of being involved in a murder case. In this particular one, it seems like this person did it for personal thrill. Since the letter remains anonymous and no one received credit for writing it, it appears to me at least, like whoever wrote it, even if it was just a hoax, did it for themselves and for their own gratification.

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Make the most of your summer downtime and spend some time with your favorite fiends. Download Best Fiends on the App Store and Google Play for free today. That's friends without the R. Best Fiends. The DNA profile collected from Cheryl's body was retested years later. Initially, the DNA profile didn't match anyone known to the system and wasn't connected to any other reported crimes.

This time, the Houston Police Department sent the DNA to the Texas Department of Public Safety for comparison. Investigators did this specific test after they discovered and received information that Angel Matrino Resendez, a convicted serial killer, just might be behind the murders. At first, it seemed like this tip was credible.

Anytime you have a convicted serial killer and unsolved murders in the same area, you always want to cross your T's and dot your I's. You either want to rule the killer out or be able to add your victims to his list.

But this new DNA test didn't produce a match either. Resendez wasn't the murderer they were searching for. And ultimately, the tip led investigators to yet another dead end. Fast forward to 2008, when there was another big break in the investigation involving that same DNA profile. Well, it turns out by 2008, authorities did get a hit, even though it was a small hit.

Houston police learned about a sexual assault that occurred just two months before Cheryl and Andy were murdered. Two months earlier, an exotic dancer reported to the police that an unknown male attacker raped her at 7826 Terracotta in Houston. The woman claimed that besides being sexually assaulted by this individual, the man also robbed her for $250.

She told the police that she was confronted by a man inside of her home around 2.30 a.m. when she got off work. The man was inside of her bedroom on the second floor and was wearing a blue-colored uniform, maybe like a security guard or some sort of other worker. The victim had just returned home from work at Gigi's nightclub.

She said when the man confronted her in her bedroom, he asked her where her boyfriend was. Because the man said her boyfriend owed him some money. When the woman said that she didn't know where her boyfriend was and he wasn't home, that's when the man tied her up and tied her up with duct tape.

He then put a bag over her head and pointed a gun at her head, saying to her if she moved or made a sound, he would shoot and kill her. The police conducted a rape kit on the victim and the authorities collected a DNA profile from her attacker. Unfortunately, the DNA sample was not properly tested until 2008.

Why it took that many years to test the DNA, I have no idea. But how this case connects to the Lovers Lane murders is that the same DNA sample. In 2008, authorities discovered that the DNA collected from the rape victim matched the DNA collected at Cheryl and Andy's crime scene. The DNA sample belonged to the same offender.

Whoever raped and robbed the exotic dancer two months earlier was also involved in the murders. After making this very important connection, Houston police asked the earlier rape victim if she could provide authorities with a description of her attacker. And what she had to say was very interesting. She provided the police with a lot of valuable information about this guy.

She said he had a, quote, very forceful military stance about him, suggesting that he could have either law enforcement background or he was possibly ex-military. She also recalled that her attacker wore an outfit similar to a security guard type outfit. She described him as six foot two, around 200 pounds, and had an olive complexion with black hair.

She said that before this attack, she'd received several threats from movers. She also said that it's possible that her attacker worked for this moving company that she owned. She was essentially saying that this attack was possibly related to some disgruntled workers she had working for her at the time.

Now, this is a really important connection because this establishes a relationship between the rape victim and one of the Lovers Lane murder victims, Andy. This woman knew and once worked for Andy's father at Dream Street, a nightclub.

Another important connection is that Andy worked at the front door of his father's nightclub when he needed extra money. So you've got an exotic dancer who had a history and still currently worked in a nightclub, but had a history of working at Andy's father's nightclub at Dream Street. And then you've got Andy who also occasionally worked at this nightclub.

This essentially establishes a relationship between these two victims who we know through the DNA profile that these two crimes, the rape and the double murders, were committed by the same individual.

It's also possible that Andy and this rape victim may have come into contact with one another. Maybe they even knew who each other were, even if it was just a single-time interaction. By far, the most interesting thing the victim told the police was that she once worked with Andy's father, who managed the nightclub Dream Street.

Now, this is a part that I do want to briefly touch on because this may or may not establish another connection and relationship. There's conflicting information on the internet about possible connections between Cheryl and the nightclub business, just like with the rape victim and Andy.

Some sources on the internet say that Cheryl worked at a bar called Rick's Cabaret, while other sources adamantly deny that Cheryl ever worked at a club or a nightclub. So without a credible source, I cannot say for sure whether or not Cheryl also had ties to working at a similar nightclub or not.

So with this physical description that the earlier sexual assault victim provided, the Houston police generated a sketch of the rapist, which I will post to the website, ForensicTales.com, so you can check it out for yourself. Since the police released this sketch, dozens, if not hundreds of tips poured in about who this offender might be.

But just like with the earlier tips, the sketch didn't generate any solid leads and didn't generate any suspects. Over the years, many people have speculated that there are other unsolved cases that are somehow related to these murders from the Houston, Texas area.

The first case involves 32-year-old Della Marie Hillard, who went missing from her Houston apartment on May 4, 1988, two years before Cheryl and Andy were murdered. Della was last heard from her friend around 8.30 p.m. when she told her friend that she was going to bed. The following day, her boyfriend went over to her apartment, but Della was nowhere to be found,

even though her windows were left open and she hadn't gone into work that day. The next day, on May 5th, the police found her abandoned car in an apartment complex about one mile away from her own apartment. Inside of the car, the police found traces of fresh blood, and it looked like to them that the car had been ransacked. Since this discovery of her abandoned car,

Della has never been heard of or seen since. Then there's the case of 18-year-old Stephanie Michelle Bueller. Stephanie also went missing from the Houston area after she pulled over to the side of the road with a flat tire.

And where she pulled over to look for someone to help her was right down the street from the Bayou Mama's nightclub, the place where Andy and Cheryl went when they were killed the same night. Stephanie's car was found still parked on the side of the road with a flat tire. Since then, she's also never been heard or seen of again. She's still considered a missing person today.

21-year-old Lorraine Light went missing a few months before Cheryl and Andy's murder on November 23, 1989. On November 23, Lorraine left the Houston apartment that she shared with her sister to go shopping for the Thanksgiving holiday.

But when Lorraine's sister returned to the apartment around 3 a.m., she saw the groceries were still left on the floor and that the turkey was defrosting in the kitchen sink. But there was no sign of Lorraine anywhere throughout the apartment. She's also still missing.

Two years after the Lovers Lane murders in August of 1992, 23-year-old Tara Breckenridge from Houston disappeared. On August 4, 1992, Tara left her job at the men's club around 1 o'clock in the morning. About an hour and a half later, around 2.30 a.m., her locked car was found parked on 12th Street.

Later that morning, around 5 a.m., her boyfriend reported her missing after failing to return home from work. Initially, there didn't appear to be any signs of a disturbance around her parked car, except for the fact that the emergency flashers were on and, of course, there was no sign of Tara anywhere. Then, finally...

There's the case of missing 34-year-old Jane McDonald Crone. Jane was last seen alive on November 12, 1993, the morning she left her home in Magnolia, Texas, to go to work for the day. Reports indicated that she worked her entire shift at Banker Hughes Tool Company, but never returned home from her shift.

So her husband was the one who reported her missing later that night. Four days after she was reported missing to the police, her car was found in Montgomery County, just a couple miles away from her and her husband's home. But there wasn't anything out of the ordinary about her car, except, again, that it was empty and that there was no sign of Jane.

Her ID was gone, her wallet was gone, everything. And to this day, Jane also remains missing and has never been seen or found. So without question, there are many similarities between Cheryl and Andy's murders and the cases involving these five missing women from the Houston area.

In all of the cases, you've got an abandoned vehicle. Some had traces of blood. Some didn't have anything. All of the cases happened within a three to four year time period in a relatively same geographic region. But I think the most significant difference is that Cheryl and Andy's bodies were discovered.

There didn't appear to be any attempt by their killer to dispose of or transfer their bodies to a different location. But in the cases of the five missing women in the area, they've never been found. Their whereabouts remain a complete mystery even today. All five women are still missing. Most of the women would now be in their 40s or 50s if they were still alive.

So those who believe that all of these cases are somehow connected have to consider that Cheryl and Andy's bodies were left behind and something else happened to the other victims. But again, without question, there are similarities.

And until any of these cases are solved or other bodies are found, the possibility that these cases are connected has to be considered. This episode of Forensic Tales is sponsored by Old Timey Crimey. You guys know that I'm always on the hunt for new true crime podcasts to binge. That's why I'm so excited to tell you about Old Timey Crimey.

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This year marks the 31st anniversary of Cheryl and Andy's murders. And whoever killed the couple remains a mystery. They have yet to be caught by the police. So what happened to Cheryl and Andy and who killed them?

Chances are, if you've heard of this case or have followed it, you might have your own ideas about what happened. Or, if this is the first time you've heard of this case, let's talk about some possible theories here. The biggest clue we have in trying to solve this comes from the DNA profile, the profile that matches the earlier rape case involving the exotic dancer.

We know that the two DNA profiles match, suggesting that the offender who committed the earlier rape is the person who committed the murder of Andy and Cheryl. But there's one massive problem. We simply don't know the identity of this person. The profile doesn't match anyone in any known DNA database, but

So does this mean that this person has never been arrested or has had any contact with law enforcement in which they were required to provide a DNA sample? You've got a person who has committed at least three violent crimes within a two-month period. It seems highly likely that this person continued to offend.

And you would think that over the years, this individual would have had some sort of contact with law enforcement. He would have had eventually been caught for a similar crime or maybe some sort of other offense over these years. But surprisingly, to our knowledge today, that hasn't happened. In my personal opinion, that seems unlikely, but again, it's still possible.

Now, the first case that comes to mind is Joseph James D'Angelo, a.k.a. the Golden State Killer. We covered GSK in one of the first episodes of Forensic Tales. He is a prolific serial killer and serial rapist from Northern California where we had his DNA profile. We had his DNA from multiple crime scenes.

But for years, decades even, we couldn't match the profile to any known suspect. He didn't have any contact with law enforcement where he was required to provide a DNA sample. In fact, he worked as a police officer in Northern California for years.

So because he has never been required to submit a DNA profile to a national registry or database, investigators from both Northern and Southern California couldn't match the samples from the different crime scenes to him. The only way that the police were eventually to catch him was through familiar DNA, the process that investigators use when they have a DNA sample but don't have a profile to match it to.

So they take the sample and compare it to family members to narrow down a possible suspect list. So Houston police can use this same process in the Lovers Lane murders. With this DNA profile that we have, Houston police has in their possession, investigators still have a chance at solving this one through familiar DNA and genetic genealogy.

All it takes is one person from the offender's family to submit a DNA profile to get this list of potential suspects. Some people speculate that Cheryl and Andy knew their killer, or at least one of them knew this person. Maybe it was someone they knew from their past, or someone they came across at work.

We know that when the police found Cheryl's body, she was covered up. The killer covered her body with broken pieces of that cedar fence. From a criminological perspective, this move often indicates a personal connection between the victim and the offender.

In many situations, when an offender knows the victim or has a personal relationship with the victim, the killer will often cover up the victim after they're killed. At face value, this doesn't make much sense, right? The offender just killed the victim. Why would they care about covering up the body?

Well, studies suggest that it's quite common. It's also common for offenders to cover up the face of their victims while assaulting or attacking them when there is a personal relationship there. This actually happens a lot more often than in cases where the perpetrator and the victim don't know each other or don't have a personal relationship with one another.

We also know that Andy was not covered up. There was no attempt by the killer to hide or cover his body. He was simply tied to the tree and left out there in the open to be discovered. So following this logic, this might suggest that the killer knew Cheryl and maybe didn't intend on killing Andy or the killer simply didn't know him.

I think the biggest obstacle to this theory is that no one emerged as a possible suspect in either one of their lives. No ex-boyfriends, no ex-girlfriends. The police couldn't find and they still can't find a single person that they knew would want them murdered. At least not someone extremely close to either one of them.

Now, another possible theory is that someone followed them out of the Bayou Mama's nightclub that night. If there was a serial predator in the area, maybe they expected Cheryl to leave the nightclub on her own, but was surprised when they found out that Andy was still with her.

So he may have only intended to attack Cheryl that night, but ended up having to kill both of them when he realized that she wasn't alone. Now let's get to one of the most popular theories in the case. The Houston police have widely believed that the killer was somehow involved in the nightclub business. This individual had some sort of connection to the industry.

whether this person frequently visited nightclubs, or maybe they worked in the clubs as a bouncer or maybe a bartender. The Houston police do believe there is a connection here. Now, the rape victim worked at Gigi's, a topless bar, and Andy's father owned Dream Streets.

Besides working at Gold's gym, Andy, like I mentioned earlier, worked at the front door of his father's nightclub on occasion. We also know the rape victim once worked at his father's club, Dream Streets. Then there's also the $20 bill that was found not too far from Cheryl's body that night.

Police have speculated that the killer accidentally dropped this $20 bill during the assault and did not intentionally leave it behind. If the killer was known to frequent nightclubs or even worked at one, this could explain why he dropped the bill because it would mean he carried around a lot of cash.

Maybe a little far-fetched, but it's a theory that it's worth exploring until the Houston police can prove otherwise. In my opinion, the best chance at solving this one comes from familiar DNA.

Like I mentioned earlier, if investigators can find at least one person, that's all they need, one person related to the killer, they'll have a shot at solving this one. It only takes one family member to submit their DNA to a genealogical website for investigators to get a solid lead.

Once they can identify a family member, they can use genealogy to narrow down a possible suspect list by identifying men who have the appropriate age at the time of the Lovers Lane murders and men who also lived or visited the Houston, Texas area. I remain incredibly hopeful that forensic science and the advancements in DNA testing

will eventually solve this one. And finally, tell us who is responsible for murdering Cheryl and Andy. The case of the Lovers Lane murders is now in the hands of the Houston Department's Cold Case Division. If you have any information or tips about the unsolved murders of Cheryl and Andy,

you're asked to call the Cold Case Team at 713-308-3618 or contact Crime Stoppers at 713-222-TIPS. That's 713-222-8477.

To share your thoughts on the Lovers Lane murders, be sure to follow the show on Instagram and Facebook at Forensic Tales. Do you think familiar DNA will be what solves this one? Or do you think the killer will get away? To check out photos from the case, 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. You can also help support the show through Patreon. Thank you so much for joining me this week. Please join me next week. We'll have a brand new case and a brand new story to talk about.

Until then, remember, not all stories have happy endings. Forensic Tales is a Rockefeller Audio Production. The show is written and produced by me, Courtney Fretwell. For a small monthly contribution, you can gain access to bonus content and be one of the first to listen to new episodes.

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For a complete list of sources used in this episode, please visit ForensicTales.com. Please join me next week. We release a new episode every Monday. Until then, remember, not all stories have happy endings.