Random Creepy Unsolved Mysteries From Texas (12 items)

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  (#1) The Ice Box Murders

  On June 23, 1965, Houston police officers forced their way into the house of Fred and Edwina Rogers at the request of their nephew Marvin, who was concerned that his phone calls had gone unanswered for a couple of days. The police checked the house, and an officer found what he thought to be numerous pieces of a butchered hog in the refrigerator. As he was closing the refrigerator door, the officer saw two human heads in the vegetable bins. The heads were those of Fred and Edwina. The couple had been murdered.

  Fred and Edwina's son, 43-year-old Charles Rogers, disappeared right after, and remains the only suspect in a case that is officially unsolved.
   
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  (#2) The Orchard Apartment Murders

  On July 27, 1979, one of Alys Rankin's coworkers went to pick her up from her Orchard Apartments home in southwest Houston. The coworker, Bob Smith, arrived to find the door slightly ajar. When he entered, he found 33-year-old Rankin lying in her bed, disrobed, feet tied together, and with a pillow over her upper body. When he removed the pillow, he saw her head had been cut off. She had also been sexually assaulted. Police have never recovered her missing head.

  Two weeks later, and two floors above Rankin, a friend found the body of 25-year-old Mary Michael Calcutta in her bathroom. She had been stabbed multiple times, so hard that the knife blade bent. The working theory is that these were just two of potentially many victims of an unidentified serial killer.
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  (#3) The Texas Killing Fields

  There is a stretch of I-45 South between Houston and Galveston where police have found the bodies of more than 30 young women and children since the 1970s. A federal agent who has been working the case unsuccessfully for years described the Texas Killing Fields as "a perfect place for killing someone and getting away with it."

  Law enforcement investigated Robert Abel, a known sex offender, but was not able to link him to the crimes. Although locals initially maintained the assumption that the victims were the result of one perpetrator, the number of bodies indicates that multiple killers have used the remote area to dispose of their victims’ bodies.
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  (#4) The Lover's Lane Murders

  The "Lover's Lane" murders took place in an undeveloped, wooded area of West Houston on the night of August 23, 1990. That night, 22-year-old Cheryl Henry and her 21-year-old boyfriend Andy Atkinson parked in a deserted spot popular with young couples in the area.

  Law enforcement found the couple's car at the scene, with their bodies in the woods close by. Both of their necks sustained damage, and Cheryl had been sexually assaulted. The unknown assailant had attempted to bury her under a wood pile, and Andy was found bound to a tree. 

  In 2008, forensic investigators analyzed a semen sample taken from Henry in 1990 and matched it to another unsolved rape case. The woman provided officers with a description of her attacker. Although there have been no arrests, Houston authorities have a sketch of the suspected killer.
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  (#5) The Texarkana Moonlight Murders

  Between February 22, 1946 and May 3, 1946, weekends became dangerous in and around Texarkana, Texas, now known as “the town that dreaded sundown.” A perpetrator known as "the Phantom Killer" attacked couples within a three-month period, claiming five lives. The incidents only occurred late at night and were usually three weeks apart.

  The Texas Rangers, including the famous M. T. "Lone Wolf" Gonzaullas, were drafted to help catch the Phantom Killer, whom witnesses described as a man wearing a sack with cut-out eye holes. Recent investigations point to Youell Swinney as a likely culprit, but he was never arrested or convicted for the slayings.
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  (#6) The Austin Yogurt Shop Murders

  On December 6, 1991, an Austin police officer saw a fire coming from an I Can't Believe It's Yogurt! shop on his patrol. After the blaze was extinguished, investigators found the bodies of four girls between the ages of 13 and 17 in the charred remains of the store. The girls had been bound with their own clothing and fatally shot.

  Over 50 people have confessed to the killings, including Kenneth McDuff, a known serial killer who was ruled out as a suspect and later executed in 1998. Authorities arrested four other men. Two of them, Robert Springsteen Jr. and Michael Scott, were convicted of the crime, but the state has since released them due to 6th amendment violations and lack of evidence.
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  (#7) Megan Curl

  At approximately 4 am on March 26, 2000, the Lufkin Fire Department arrived on the scene of a fire at Fox Run Apartments. After firefighters extinguished the blaze, they recovered the body of 26-year-old Megan Curl. 

  According to investigators, an unknown assailant had bound Curl to her bed, assaulted her, and killed her prior to setting her remains on fire. A neighbor reported Curl had a visitor - a man Curl said she had met at a club prior that evening and who followed her home. Police never identified the suspect.
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  (#8) Amber Hagerman

  • Person

  On January 13, 1996, an unknown assailant abducted 9-year-old Amber Hagerman while she was riding her bike in Arlington, Texas. Four days later, a man walking his dog found her in a storm drain.

  Witnesses had reported seeing Amber forced into a black pickup truck, but the time it took to alert authorities and then get the word out to the public was not enough to save her. The AMBER Alert system now used throughout the US was developed as a direct result of this crime, and over 900 children have since been found and saved.
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  (#9) Servant Girl Annihilator

  • Person

  “The Servant Girl Annihilator” was active in Austin between 1884 and 1885 and claimed the lives of at least eight women. In most cases, the unknown killer would enter women's homes and knock them unconscious. Then he would take them outside and use an ax to finish them. 

  Authorities never identified the culprit, although some think he may have been Jack the Ripper on a trip to the US.
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  (#10) The Missing Trio of Fort Worth

  On December 23, 1974, three girls - Rachael Trlica, 17; Lisa Renee Wilson, 14; and Julie Ann Moseley, 9 - went to the Seminary South Shopping Mall to run some holiday errands. The girls disappeared without a trace. Despite intensive police investigations throughout the years, the fate of the “missing trio” is unknown.

  In 2018, the girls’ families had raised enough money to have the nearby Benbook Lake searched for possible leads. Police divers recovered three vehicles, although none provided a link to the missing girls.
   
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  (#11) The Cross Roads Murders

  On the morning of June 25, 1981, the wife of Willard Baugh went to the Cross Roads Tavern just outside of Port Lavaca to locate her husband. Reportedly, she entered the bar and found her husband, along with three women, all shot in the head. 

  The three women - Lennie York, the tavern owner; Lark Saylar, an occasional customer; and Marjorie Matosha, a server - were all dead. The unknown assailant had also stabbed Baugh, who died 28 days later. Police were unable to gather conclusive evidence from the scene.
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  (#12) Sun Family Murders

  The 2014 murder of a family of four rocked the Chinese community in Cypress. An unknown assailant shot Maoye Sun, his wife Mei Xei, and their sons, Titus and Timothy, four times each at close range while they slept. Authorities did not discover the crime until Sun’s work notified them of his absence. 

  No suspect has ever been found, though a former Chief Security Officer of China, Zhou Yongkang, may have admitted he ordered the hit while being questioned about a different crime. Some believe that Sun, an engineer, may have known about Zhou's dealings in the Chinese oil industry in the '90s, though this has not been confirmed.

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