Texas True Crime: Decapitation Murders | Full Documentary
Well, in about 1 hour and a half, the 1970s will be all over and it will be the 1980s. Is it getting wild? Oh, happy new year, Doug. We’re over at the There’s a lot of energy. A lot of stuff going on. Some of the costumes are pretty elaborate. Things are just quick and happening all the time.
There was definitely a a a lot of energy in a a high vibe environment back then. At least that’s how I recall. 97. So we murder rate continues to soar tonight in the final hours of 1979. Houston is in the middle of a murder wave the likes of which city has never seen before. Where was the head in position to the body? The head in position body.
Well, the head was not on the body. We don’t know where the head is. There’s murder and then there’s what happened in 1979 in Houston, Texas. Elise Rankin was stabbed and her head decapitated back near the end of July. Elise Rankin, Mary Kolkata, Doris Threadgill, Joanne Huffman, Bobby Spangenburgger. Five victims.
Some of [snorts] Houston’s most grizzly, infamous k!llings happened at the end of a booming decade. Murders you may not have ever heard of. More than 45 years later, they are still unsolved. Are they connected and how? Detectives have worked on answering those questions for decades. It’s difficult after all this time if it hasn’t yet been solved.
We hope that something somebody remembers something, somebody saw something. But I’m in my 70s and Mary would be too. And I don’t know anymore. I’m Courtney Fischer and this is Texas True Crime, the decapitation murders. The Lost America’s Apartments in Southwest Houston is like a little city. Immigrants from Mexico, Venezuela, Honduras, Cuba, Colombia, a melting pot of cultures and families, mostly from Latin America, working and living together.
One of the most diverse neighborhoods in all of Houston. Back in the 1970s, this area looked a bit different. When blocks and blocks of apartments were built for and catered to young single working professionals, Houston’s oil industry was booming. All those new jobs, young men and women moving to town in droves, needed a place to live where they could meet people, have fun, date.
That was the vibe. This was a growing growing town back then. It was the Orchard Apartments in 1979. Oil was big at that time. That’s what drew a lot of people over here. People like Elise Rankin, a 33-year-old secretary for an engineering firm studying psychology at the University of Houston, working towards her bachelor’s degree.
Her family says Elise had a 13-year-old daughter, but had recently separated from the girl’s father and moved into the Orchard Apartments. She was looking for a fresh start. But on July 27th, 1979, you can tell that there was a fight based on the photos. Elise was murdered. There was no forced entry. So, whoever the k!ller was was allowed inside or at least the door was open and it went from there.
Blood on the green door of apartment 409. Inside, detectives photographed and inspected the brown shag carpeted one room unit. Books, records, stuff on the couch. It was tough to figure out what was out of place and what wasn’t. Single woman, obviously living by herself. Um, you know, it wasn’t the best kept apartment.
There’s a little bit of clutter here and there. Uh, but there was definitely a struggle. The young mother was found by a colleague who went looking for a lease when she didn’t show up for work, police say. Her lifeless body laying in a bedroom. She was naked with a pillow over her head, reports at the time said, and she had been sexually assaulted, according to investigators.
Electric cord was found wrapped around Alisa’s wrists and ankles, Houston Police Detective Richard Rodriguez says, and a bloody butcher knife was found on the floor near a razor blade on the bed. Investigators believed Elise had been k!lled that morning, mere hours before she was discovered. But perhaps the most disturbing part of it all, Elise had been decapitated and her head was gone.
Outside the door, a blood trail. The uh suspect took the head and when he went down to the vehicle, it looked like he placed the head down onto the parking lot because there was a blood stain that just matches something like that. No one saw anything or at least there’s no documentation of it.
Police say no witnesses at the time came forward. From Alisa’s apartment, officers collected some loose papers and travelers checks. Nothing stood out back then, Rodriguez says. But the thing that really baffled police is what happened to Elisa’s head. You know, I helped investigate some grizzly crimes. This one tops them all.
On the 6:00 news, Alisa’s murder was profiled. Bab and other detectives have gone over the woman’s past with a fine tooth comb. Days and weeks had passed. Lisa’s head hadn’t been found. Where was it? And what were police doing to find it? I don’t believe anybody up here knows why her head was taken.
We do know her head left the apartment possibly in a pillowcase, taken to a car, then driven away. Uh we have been getting 50 to 100 leads a day. Tips may have been coming in, but nothing panned out. And after Alisa’s sexual assault kit was processed, police say there were still no leads. This is one of those bloody cases where you got to think to yourself, what kind of individual can do this? What did she do to make this happen to her? Reading in the reports that just a just a normal girl woman trying to make her way,
trying to make the best out of her life here in Houston, a normal woman trying to make her way. Mise was the first. Then exactly two weeks later, two separate brutal murders in their apartment. A second young vibrant woman stabbed to death in the same complex. This time it was Mary Kolkata, a 27-year-old clerk who had also lived alone.
Per-sized containers of mace went on sale at the office of the Orchard Apartments today. Some women there were terrified. Others thought, I guess it can happen just about everywhere. But everyone was asking, could it happen again? I went and bought me a shotgun today and I can use it. Mary had lived a couple floors above and a few doors down from Elisa’s unit.
Again, it looked like there had been a struggle. Again, a butcher knife left at the scene. Again, signs of a sexual assault. Police say clear similarities in what happened to Elise, but in Mary’s murder. When he was done with it, all the best he could do was just almost decapitate her and and at some point he just had to leave.
What did police have on their hands? Was this the same k!ller? Why these two women who by all accounts, investigators say, didn’t even know each other, 1300 miles from Houston, Mary’s family would get the call in Pittsburgh. My mother screamed bloody murder. So I hugged her, you know, as tight as I could just try to comfort her.
their Mary who left home seeking independence and adventure. Do you ever think that it’s going to happen to you or a friend that you know no was gone in this old bricked porch house in Pittsburgh. When she was older, she had that room up in the third floor with Mary Kolkata grew up as the middle of six children.
This was home for everybody. Sister Margaret Anne was the eldest, 10 years and two days older than Mary. We always took pictures out here. Margaret Anne said she prayed her parents would give her a sister. Remembered vividly the day her father came home with news from the hospital. But I remember yelling out the window, “What did mother have?” And and he said, “A girl.” And I was just so excited.
You needed a girl on your team. That’s right. [laughter] Yeah. From day one, Margaret Anne looked out for her little Mary. Mary was always very happy, you know, and um you know, we used to call her Princess. Mary had health issues. Sister Margaret Anne says, trouble balancing, controlling her muscles, symptoms of cerebral pausy.
But she says Mary refused to let that hold her back. She loved baking cakes, took up square dancing, would try anything once. But her passion, Margaret Anne says, was traveling. I don’t recall her ever thinking about herself or thinking, “Poor me or her health.” How did your parents feel about her leaving Pittsburgh? You know what? I think they probably would have rather she stayed here.
She called me on the phone and she said, “Hey, I’m moving to Houston, Texas.” Beth McKinstry was Mary’s best friend. I remember this so distinctly blurted out saying, “You can’t do that. You don’t even have a job.” And she said, “But I do.” and she knocked my socks off. She just surprised me because she had the um ability to and the determination, I guess, is a better word, to find a job in Houston.
Beth says they had just graduated high school. Beth went off to college while Mary went on to secretarial school, but the two had stayed close. Mary and I grew up on the same street. Our mothers were friends. would get together, have dinner, um go to movies together, do things together. She was more than just a friend.
I mean, she really was a part of your family. Oh, yes. Yes. That says Mary was itching to get out of town, ready for adventure. Houston was it. She moved to the Orchard Apartments. She had her own apartment. She enjoyed it very much, and there was no coming back. On Sundays, Beth and Mary had their weekly catchup call.
Mary had lived in Houston less than a year when she called her on a week night. Unusual. Something told me that something was wrong and it popped right out of my mouth. Why are you calling me on a week night? Um and she explained that uh there was a murder in her building and she was afraid. Detective Jean Bab has been with the police department for 16 years.
I just remember her just being so nervous about it. In those apartments at 5913 Glenmont. Had you ever heard fear like that in her voice ever before? No, I never heard fear in Mary’s voice because she was always happy, happy, having a good time. So, this had really rattled her. Oh, yeah.
We talked about all the precautions that she could take. Um, we talked about not letting anybody in that you didn’t know. Um, we talked about walking the halls and making sure you look over your shoulder. One of the things that she told me she was thinking about doing was moving a bookcase that I imagined in my mind’s eye was right next to the door and that she was going to slide it over to put in front of the door.
And I said to her, “That seems like a good idea.” Um, and so that’s kind of where we ended it. When you hung up the phone, you felt like she has a plan. My friend is safe. I was hoping it was just one person that unfortunately uh met her demise that way. Never dreamed that anything could have happened to Mary. Never dreamed.
Then Mary Kolkata was stabbed to death this past weekend. Exactly 14 days after Elise was k!lled and decapitated. Another gruesome scene at the Orchard Apartments. On August 10th, 1979, Mary Kolkata was found murdered on her bathroom floor, stabbed to death dozens of times.
So many times, police say she was nearly decapitated. Her blood spattered all over the lenolum floor and her powder blue bath mat. The 27-year-old had also been sexually assaulted. Investigators would later learn her one-bedroom unit was three floors above Alisa’s apartment, and police couldn’t ignore the similarities to Alisa’s murder.
By the time a friend of Mary’s found her and the butcher knife next to her body, investigators say they thought she had been dead nearly 18 hours. She was really fighting this guy. And and I think that’s probably partially why u she was not completely decapitated because I think u that that was a huge struggle. He had to have been tired.
I I I just don’t see that any other way. Stuff looked out of place. Detective Rodriguez says photos show a couple jumbled chairs next to the front door clearly dusted for Prince, but there’d be no real leads. As officers collected evidence from Mary’s apartment, Margaret Anne was helping her parents clean up after dinner in their Pittsburgh home.
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When the phone rang, her father answered. I’m putting dishes away and my mother’s coming up from the basement and my father’s going, “Yes, yes, yes. Well, who is this? Yes, yes, yes. Who is this?” And he turned around and he said, “Mary Mike’s been murdered.” And when he said that, my my heart completely stopped. I mean it.
45 years ago, the very house we’re sitting in today, I just remember sitting in this living room all night. We never went to bed. Um that night, we just kept sitting up here in shock. I think everybody was quiet. Um very quiet. was the next day when her sister uh sister Margaretian called me to tell me that Mary had passed.
And uh I just remember saying to her, “But I just spoke to her on the phone. I just spoke to her on the phone.” And uh I don’t really remember much more about that conversation. I just know I cried for three weeks straight. My mother, she had a really hard time. My father said that she would just cry all night all the time for a long time afterwards.
I I couldn’t process it. Um but I remember that uh the detective called me and asked me some questions about Mary. Would Mary open the door for anybody that she didn’t know? And I said absolutely not. I said she wouldn’t do that on a normal basis. And especially after we talked about that, she I’m sure she wouldn’t do that.
And especially after what had happened, two women murdered two weeks apart. They’re both in the same apartment complex. That’s number one. According to police reports, detectives quickly theorized Mary and Elise were likely murdered by the same person. Number two, the MMO pretty much exactly the same outside of one was decapitated, the other one wasn’t, but but uh the second case, she was almost decapitated.
Now, why why didn’t he go through with the decapitation? I don’t know. Did he get scared off? Did Did something happen? Was it just too hard? You know, fill in the blank. Mhm. I’m not sure, but those two cases are pretty much exactly the same. I would find it highly unlikely uh that you have two separate suspects or two separate k!llers go to the same apartment complex and commit two separate murders that are exactly the same.
If it’s a copycat, that’s a whole lot of energy going into that second k!lling. The grizzliness of it all. This wasn’t a typical Houston murder. Why did you buy it? Well, I’m trying to um take precaution so I wouldn’t get, you know, but how could you protect yourself from this? Two women were raped and murdered. Their bodies horribly mutilated.
Alisa’s head was gone. Mary was left butchered. You cannot even walk to the utom. What kind of person could do something so heinous, so violent? And that’s why all of us are fighting together. We want to be able to get our rights back that we can walk down the street. There’s something inside these individuals that just it just switches.
They go to another state of mind to do this to another human body. Because at the end of the day, what are we looking at? We are looking at another human being and you have to disassociate yourself and say this is no longer a human being anymore to physically decapitate somebody. Is there a prime suspect, one person in both of these unsolved murders? From what I read, they they really hadn’t come up with a a prime suspect or person of interest that they were saying like, you know what, this is going to be our guy. Did Alice or Mary know their
k!ller? You know, I’m not going to say yes and I’m not going to say no. How common is it for your neighbor, for a maintenance man, for whoever come knocking on the door, but you have to remember once that door is open, it’s you’ve been breached. And if somebody’s intent on doing something because they’ve selected you to be their next target or their next victim, that’s all they need is just that one opening.
It’s kind of scary cuz you don’t know why they did it. That feeling, that fear from Mary’s murder led the 10 p.m. news. Bids are also out to replace every lock of every one of the 552 apartment units. But 7 hours before officers showed up to her apartment, there had been another girl, another murder.
Doris Armstrong Threadgill stabbed to death in her town home just about 9 miles north of Mary and Alice. Her throat, too, slashed and slashed, Rodriguez says. But there was something about this crime scene. Dors’s murder, in my opinion, is a little different that struck investigators. Either she just made herself a very easy target or she knew she knew the k!ller.
Regardless, three women k!lled in two weeks in the most ghastly, gruesome, vicious way. What was happening in Houston? Doris Threadgill’s blood dotted the lenolium kitchen floor of her town home. The trail went out the front door, down her sidewalk. Doris had been stabbed in the chest multiple times, investigators say so severely cut that she was virtually decapitated.
Report of the Houston Post in 1979. Another one. But this scene was different. Detective Rodriguez says for a murder where somebody is almost decapitated, it was a very clean crime scene. What detectives noted about Doris’s murder, says Rodriguez, was that nearly nothing was disturbed. No knife was left at the scene.
Doris’s front door wasn’t kicked in or forced open. She was wearing all her jewelry and clothing. No furniture out of place. Nothing knocked from shelves. And she wasn’t sexually assaulted, according to police reports. By the kitchen sink, investigators photographed a couple wine glasses and packaged cigarette butts from an ashtray as evidence.
To me, it didn’t look like there was a big struggle. Was Doris expecting someone? Either she just made herself a very easy target or she knew she knew the k!ller. Doris lived alone. Her family tells me the 26-year-old was married but estranged from her husband of less than four years.
They say he was interviewed, cleared by an alibi and never considered a suspect. Renria says Doris worked at a hearing aid company and was last seen the night before around 9:00 p.m. according to initial reports. An exterminator found her dead about 12 hours later. Elise Mary Doris. Initially, investigators believed all three murders could have been connected.
They kept going back to the brutal way these single young women were terrorized. Yet Rodriguez sees it differently. I just find it difficult um for you to commit a murder like Mary’s where she clearly fought to leave there, recoup, re-energize, do whatever. Get your mindset back to, okay, now I’m ready for the next one.
It’s It’s hard for me to fathom. For the next two months, detectives would question dozens and dozens of people. The interviews long stored in thick folders. Police reported they talked to 75 persons of interest in Elise Rankin’s case alone. Weeks passed, then months, no breaks. Nothing released to the public. Anyway, the gruesome murder of four small children this morning in Houston.
Meanwhile, Houston’s murder rate was climbing. Five more people were k!lled overnight, bringing the total for the year to 392. And that is 122 more persons k!lled during the same period last year. By August, 1979 was on track to be the most lethal year in Houston’s history. The nation’s fifth largest city with so much promise and opportunity for some was suffering a crime wave never seen before rising steadily.
You see the mood of the city, the mood of the people changing. There’s nothing I can put my finger on. Murders went unsolved. Still another murder of a young Houston woman to the Rankin family, the Kolkatas, the Threadgills, all waiting for investigators to bring them answers. Friends and neighbors left living in fear.
They were probably scared. I’m sure they were. You have to be. If you’re watching the news at all, reading the newspaper, you know what? And or just aware of what’s going on around you. Yeah, you’re you’re definitely looking over your shoulder. Only the k!llers can tell us why they choose to take someone else’s life, and we can only hope that it doesn’t happen to us.
Two months later, it happened to them. They went out on a date on a Tuesday night and just didn’t come home. Bobby Spangenberger and Joanne Huffman murdered. The bodies of the young couple dumped a few miles from each other. Joanne left in the middle of a park. Bobby in the trunk of this white Dodge.
The body was lying on its right side in what I guess you could call a fetal position in the trunk of the uh the vehicle. I’m sure that you saw sometimes it feels like you can remember like it was yesterday. Where was the head in position to the body? The head in position body. Well, the head was not on the body.
Where was it? We don’t know where the head is. I don’t want to think of him having to go through that. They said his hands were all torn up, that he fought that he fought them. I saw the blood on the car and that’s when I went and called the police. I do wonder what his life would be like now. You know, what career would he have? You know, he literally just graduated high school.
What did you see when they opened the car? When I opened the trunk, I saw the body and it was very gruesome because the head was missing. What were his dreams? Would he be married? Would I have nieces and nephews? And if I had have known what I was going to see, I I would have stepped back. I wouldn’t have looked.
But uh you know, I really wished I hadn’t because it’s a very gruesome sight. But uh I that’s all I’ve got to say about it. It’s just then I turned around and walked off. He was such a kind, helpful, thoughtful person. He really was. I had no idea that man could be that cruel. You know, the why.
You know, we’ve always wanted to know why. What happened? Why? Brenda Spangenberger’s older brother, Bobby, was just 18 years old in 79. He was funny. He was a musician. He was a drummer in a band. The one with the great hair, outgoing, who caught the attention of 17-year-old Joanne Huffman. Boyfriend, girlfriend, less than a year, but smitten with each other. Brenda remembers.
I know he was looking out for her. I just knew her as Bobby’s girlfriend. You know, they were at the house. They went out on dates. October 3rd was one of those date nights when Bobby and Joanne ended up at Watonga Park in northwest Houston. But Brenda didn’t know where Bobby was that night, just that he still hadn’t returned by the next morning.
She remembers getting a note at school from her mother come home at lunch. I didn’t know what to be afraid of. When I got home and saw mom and how panicked she was, that panicked me. And I remember we got in the car and we drove around. No sign of Bobby, no sign of his car, no word from Joanne. We go back to the apartment and immediately the phone rings.
We got a phone call and it was the detectives and um they said they needed to come and talk to us. So they were in the leasing office waiting for us to get back. Knock on the door. Mom answers it. They come in and there was an older detective and a younger detective and the older detective said, “We have reason to believe your son has been murdered.
” And mom just gasped and he helped her sit in a chair and I just started saying, “No, no, no, no, no, no, no.” We know for a fact that Joanne was was shot and k!lled there at the park. Joanne was found first earlier that morning. As Brenda and her mother were riding around town looking for Bobby, they had no idea the park had become a crime scene.
Joanne found dead by a passer by. I was just riding my bike through the park and I seen the body laying face down. I rode over by it and looked at it and seen the big puddle of blood. Went home, called the police. While officers were at the park, a call came across the radio. Uhoh. A few miles away, a body found in the trunk of an abandoned sedan at a used car lot.
It was Bobby. I think we mentioned earlier that it was decapitated. Whatever what other injuries, if any, there are, I don’t know at this time. Our whole lives changed. I mean, completely and totally in a second. What kind of person cuts someone’s head off? Like, I just, you know, and takes it with them.
I know. I Yeah. I used to imagine all kinds of things. Is it in a jar in somebody’s basement? Is that something that they keep? You know, is that why dehumanizing this this this person and walking away with their head? Like I mean honestly, who does that than other than a sick sick individual? Who does that? But I can remember driving places at night, like to a football game or something, and not wanting to look out the window because in my head, you know, you see the bags of trash. Is his head in there? What am
I going to see in the ditch? So, I wouldn’t look. Of course, no surveillance cameras at that car lot. This was 1979, and no one ever came forward saying they saw anything unusual there, Rodriguez says. But the night before the bodies were found, a neighbor near the park called 911, reported hearing a woman scream followed by gunshots.
According to the case notes, the original investigators did talk to a witness that said, “Yes, I saw somebody, a female, getting dragged in the park, a unit was dispatched that night as well to go out there and check.” And obviously nothing was found. Joanne had been shot. Bobby’s head was gone.
Neither had been robbed according to the reports, but detectives didn’t have much more than that. We don’t know why he was k!lled, where he was k!lled, but there was blood on the outside of the vehicle uh to where it looked like maybe the head was taken out or maybe the the the blood transferred from when the body was put in. It’s kind of hard to say.
And it’s hard to say what kind of person could have wanted these two young people dead. enemies with such a violent vengeance, but they were just teenagers, barely starting their lives. Police didn’t find anyone in their past like that. Rodriguez says, “This screams more psychopath. This doesn’t scream, oh, you know, I pissed off somebody in this particular crowd, and you know, they’re coming for for revenge.
” Anybody you talk to that knew him liked him. It just seems to me that these guys were just in the wrong place at the wrong time and somebody was just waiting for the right victims. Decapitations aren’t common. They’re not common. And then you have one in August, two other women whose throats are slashed so deeply that their heads are nearly off.
And then you have this couple and the young man is found decapitated. Could they be all connected? No, they could be. Like I said, it it’s I think it’s it’s highly irregular that you have um multiple suspects all in the same area decapitating people at the same time. I’m not ready to say that it’s the same individual.
Rodriguez says he’s putting together a sort of jigsaw puzzle with all these cases. Crime scene photos, one piece, witness statements, another piece. the missing piece, forensics and all the advancements in DNA over the past four decades. But with the technology that we have today, there’s a whole lot there.
And so we went to the evidence room where reporters aren’t usually allowed to go when it comes to looking at unsolved cases. This is good stuff right here. This is good stuff. And what we found, well, they’re individually packaged, so there’s no crosscontamination with these. Oh man, this is awesome.
It could be the break investigators need. The small gray evidence viewing room with no windows is bleak. No one seems to notice. Anxious nerves have taken over. I am glad we’re here for the boxes of evidence in El’ses, Mary’s, Doris’s, Joann’s, and Bobby’s murder. Some haven’t been opened for decades.
This looks like it’s going to be stuff from the car. Detective Rodriguez doesn’t let most people into this room. And honestly, I don’t think they even took photos of this on the original crime scene. We start with Bobby’s box. in it. Old road maps from the white dodge where his body was found, newspapers, some photos. But as far as what we can test, doesn’t look too hopeful right now.
The goal to go through each one of these five unsolved cases to see what evidence police have, what’s been potentially misplaced, and what items can be retested for DNA. Bobby’s box doesn’t have much physical evidence. Rodriguez cross references items that should be in there from a log.
He says some things are missing, though won’t go into detail. Mary’s evidence is next. There are deposit slips, receipts, papers from her apartments, a checkbook, Mary’s library card, a phone bill. There’s some hair in here. I better Okay. Rodriguez takes the hair but isn’t confident there’s enough sample to test. It’s not labeled.
He doesn’t know whose hair it is. And then this. Here’s Belladana, the lady of the rocks, the lady of situations. Interesting. A line from the TS Elliott poem, The Wasteland. Pros about brokenness and loss. Is it Mary’s handwriting? Rodriguez says he doesn’t know. The poem was never noted as evidence in her case file. He says, “I’m definitely going to find out read the report again to find out where they collected this from and then try to figure out the significance of this.
” He spends hours unboxing and wrapping carefully, thoughtfully. We get to Doris’s box. There should be a lot of DNA. The box Rodriguez had been anticipating the most because Doris’s report says police collected several cigarette butts. Remember her apartment? Neat. Undisturbed. Rodriguez said those two wine glasses sitting on the counter as if Doris had been expecting company or already had someone over.
It appears it appears that nothing has been tampered with from when it was originally collected. Oh, you can’t ask for anything better than that, especially with a case this old. One after the other, Rodriguez removes sealed white envelopes, evidence labeled. Cigarette butts, cigarette packages, a candy wrapper, matchicks.
For the most part, they’re all individually packaged. None of these envelopes have ever been opened, Rodriguez says. And this is why I was really excited about this case right here as far as from the from the testing aspect because it did not look like they went back and looked at ret or testing anything forensically.
This is what he had been hoping for. Undisturbed evidence that could be tested for the very first time. And that’s what Rodriguez says he plans to do. I’m not going to get my my hopes up too high, but these are old cases. DNA degrades over the years, so we’ll just see what we have and then go from there.
Elise Ranken’s evidence has been tested, he discovers next. Since Elise and Mary Kolkata were believed to have been sexually assaulted in 2010, investigators decided to take another look at both Orchard apartment cases. But then again, in the world of DNA, yeah, that’s a long time ago.
Rodriguez pulls out Alisa’s traveler’s checks, her $215 rent receipt, magazine clippings, and then she has an incident slip for a burglary of her apartment, the month before. This is interesting. No mention of any burglary the month before in Elisa’s case file. Rodriguez says, “Did investigators ever follow up on that incident report? Did they know they had it shuffled in her papers?” Maybe the guy was casing her her apartment, broke into it the month before, got a lay of the land, knew where everything was at. I mean,
obviously I’m [ __ ] spitballing here, but but uh man, that’s crazy, though. Rodriguez photographs the burglary slip before moving on to Joannne’s evidence. There’s a gun in her box, but no mention in her case report of a firearm found at the scene. Rodriguez says he thinks it’s from a different case entirely.
And that’s the issue with some of this old evidence. He says through the years, things can get misplaced and moved. Rodriguez had hoped to find the knives from Elise’s and Mary’s murder. They were collected, police initially documented, but they weren’t in the boxes. The whole process, sifting through evidence takes more than five hours.
Detailed, slow work. Frankly, Rodriguez knows may or may not pay off. I’ve done this long enough to know that just because you have the evidence and just because you get it tested, you don’t always get DNA. This is definitely not the movies. This is definitely not CSI. That’s what working cold cases is like.
Sometimes the DNA is just not there. In Pittsburgh lives a family still hopeful. Mary Kolkata’s sisters and brothers know getting answers about what happened to Mary is complicated. Testing that old evidence guarantees nothing, as you now know. So, Sister Margaret Anne thought, “What can I do? How can I work alongside police on a 45year-old case?” Oh, yeah.
No, I remember it like it was yesterday. Help. I That’s something I won’t forget. Not hinder. I won’t forget that night. Well, if your sister Margaret Anne, you’ll try anything, which means cold calling an investigator who knew nothing about Mary’s murder. I was reading the newspaper and he had solved this cold case of a woman that had been murdered three weeks after Mary in the same year.
But here in Pennsylvania, there’s somebody like me everywhere. Investigator Andy Gaul has a passion for working on cases that have long gone cold. I got in touch with him. I tracked him down. [laughter] Well, first off, you can’t turn Sister Margaret Anne down. We’ve been friends ever since and he’s been such a gift to our family.
I remember hanging up and saying to my wife, she’s listen because she’s listening to my end of the conversation. She says, “What are you going to be able to do in Houston, Texas?” And I said, “Well, I don’t know, but I’m going to try.” Gaul, while working as an investigator at a district attorney’s office near Pittsburgh, took an interest in Mary’s case.
The vast majority of the people in that apartment complex were nice young working professionals. There’s always a predator. There’s always somebody who moved in there for that exact reason. And we all know that predators don’t really look like the ones they put in the cartoons. They they look like real regular people. Dozens and dozens of neighbors and workers at the complex were interviewed, police say, but investigators didn’t find any potential suspects.
Gaul kept a portrait of Mary under the glass on his desk in his law enforcement office before retiring this year. A reminder, one of four cases he says he can’t solve yet. You see it every day. They’re looking at you and they make you never forget. His copies of Mary’s case file is worn, filled with handwritten notes, the leads he’s chased for more than a decade.
G says he won’t stop digging. And perhaps that’s the greatest comfort to Sister Margaret Anne. I think your grit and tenacity, you might solve this case. [laughter] Well, because I’ll keep badgering people. [laughter] You see these family members who become your friends it’s hard once you meet somebody not to care.
It’s emotional. Huh? It is. It is. Um I just uh you look at what good could come from something like this. Our friendship came from that. And otherwise, if this had never happened, we’d have never met. The only thing we can do is leave it in God’s hands and try to get all the help that we could get and take all the counsel we can get and then just trust how God’s going to lead it all.
I wouldn’t be as lucky as a person that I am if I never met her. And it’s just uh and her tenacity makes you want to continue they so they will together the retired detective and strong willed older sister they are a force for Mary Kolkata the investigators report see the families help drive these cases Elise Rankin Mary Kolkata Doris Threadgill Joanne Huffman Bobby Spangenburgger her.
Their memories collected in faded photo albums and handwritten notes. Beth to a very sharp friend. She liked to use the word sharp. Mary’s best friend still has them all. Remember uh the Friday night dates we used to have. Some of those memories Beth McInstre plays over and over blocking out the trauma of losing Mary.
I have a tendency to erase some of the worst parts, self-preservation, [snorts] because it’s not just the fact that Mary’s gone. Beth is always grieving the life together she lost. Mary wasn’t in Beth’s wedding. Didn’t see her children come into this world. Couldn’t help celebrate career accomplishments. It’s just still very hard [gasps and laughter] after all these years because I loved her so much and she was like a sister.
I don’t have half sisters but she was like a sister to me. So Beth won’t give up like Margaret Anne and D Andy Gaul. At some point you say it’s out of your control that you’ve provided what you know to be true and um it’s up to somebody else to find the answers. Five violent slayings over two and a half months.
Women now prefer to walk in pairs and the terrified the city tortured the families and left police asking are they connected. I can see where somebody would say oh yeah that’s the same guy. I can see that on the surface it looks that way but again for me I I I I have to go back to the hard physical evidence.
What does the evidence say and what is it telling me? And on the surface all the evidence has been exhausted. Rodriguez says, but nearly half a century after these murders, he’s ready to dig deeper. DNA testing, sure, but Rodriguez also wants to understand the profile of this k!ller or k!llers. A lot of these these psychopaths and serial k!llers, they they like to take trophies.
You know, some it’s a article of clothing, piece of jewelry, pictures, a head, you know, a head. I I mean it it’s just hard to get into the psyche of some of these individuals. The person who did this has to be close in age to me or slightly older. You’re getting into a period of your time that you are starting to realize your own end could be coming near.
If they have any conscience at all, they see something like this, they can speak out themselves. I think the why, Courtney, is so much more important than the who because it really doesn’t matter who, you know, but the why. Why would somebody do that so horrifically? And that they may never know.
These were people living their own lives, just starting out. This is Joanne and Bobby. I want them to remember him for his life, not for the horrific details of his death. Because he was so much more than that. The people left behind have learned to live with the heartache. It doesn’t leave, just gets pushed aside.
But the ripple effects are felt through the years. Oh, I believe that heartbreak k!lled my mother. She only lived 12 years after he died. And that’s it’s a lot for a mom to go through. And I didn’t realize how much she went through until I became a mother. And it changes how you mother. It changes how you treat your family after all this time.
If it hasn’t yet been solved. Um we’re talking 45 years and it’s a long long long time. I’m in my 70s and Mary would be too. And I don’t know anymore. [snorts] I have to believe that, you know, somehow God will let come to light what he can. Have you forgiven the person who k!lled Mary? Oh, yes. Mhm. Yeah.
If we don’t find out, the person has to live with their own conscience. You know that person knows whose they are and if they have murdered more than one person they have to live with that and they cannot be living in peace. That’s something sister Margaret Anne shares with the person who took her sister not living in peace.
Sister won’t stop asking for help asking people pay attention. She’s a fighter like Mary was. and Elise and Doris, Joanne, and Bobby. No one has the right to take your life. If the case is solved, I’m not a believer necessarily in closure, but at least you have an answer and you can move on. If it’s never been explained why and who took your life, somebody has to still look because it should never be forgotten.
It’s too important to the people that are left behind.
