It was supposed to be a night to remember, but in the end I’m 17 years old Carla Walker’s last.
Fort Worth, Texas, teenager and her boyfriend, handsome high school quarterback Rodney McCoy, went with him to school’s Valentine’s Day dance.
They spent an event dance night in February 1974, laughing with friends, then cruising along a popular highway at Ford Limited, which McCoy borrowed from his mother. “After the Dance” episode of Dateline: I can’t forget.
“I was having a really good time and didn’t even care what time it was,” McCoy told Dateline, an unforgettable night.
However, a few hours later, a bloody McCoy rushes to the door of Carla’s family. An unforgettable message: She’s gone.
Discover the truth about what happened to a tragic night that took more than 40 years, revealing a calm murderer with cold-blooded motives.
“This story took me and I sat deep in the distant past,” Dateline Correspondent Josh Mankivich I said this in the episode. “Of all the stories I’ve covered, this may be the best example of how devastating and liberating the truth can be.”
Who was Carla Walker?
Those who knew Cara remember her as a sweet, funny, nauseous nausea known to have a stubborn streak. Standing just under five feet tall, larger than Carla’s real life, was about the same size as her.
“I know she wanted to be a veterinarian,” recalled her brother Jim Walker. “Carla was small, but powerful.”
A high school cheerleader, one of her family’s five children, was also in love. She and McCoy were “it” couples at school and were vy hopes of many people who knew them. McCoy gave her the promised ring just months before she disappeared.
“It meant a lot to me,” McCoy recalls. “It means I’m here. I belong to you, and I promise you.”
Carla Walker’s last night lived
Valentine’s Day dance has become another chapter in an epic teenage love story.
As McCoy told Mankiewitch on the night of the dance, he arrived to pick up Carla at his mother, Ford. Ltd.
“When she dressed up, she did it right,” he said of his beautiful date that night.
The whimsical couple went out to an event where they danced all night and mingled with their friends. When the dance concluded, some of the participants agreed to meet at local teen hot spot, Taco Bell, on then Friday and Saturday nights.
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McCoy invited another couple to invite them, and the two couples spent the night running down the popular boulevard.
“We were cruised a bit, talking and we were having a good time,” McCoy recalled.
At about 12:30am, McCoy dropped the other couple into the car, and he and Carla continued driving. When she had to go to the bathroom, McCoy said they stopped by a bowling alley not too far from Carla’s house. After they returned to the car, the couple began making it in the car.
“We started kissing, making what the teenagers do, her head was almost resting on her arms, but she took her wallet, put it behind her head and held the pillow,” he explained.
According to McCoy, the couple was uneasy when a stranger suddenly opened the door to the crossing and began to wander McCoy with the pistol’s ass.
“He nailed me quite a bit with the first shot with the pistol ass,” McCoy said of Mystery Man. “He placed his hand in the car, thrusts about 3-4 inch pistols from my face and began pulling the trigger. I remember clicks, three clicks.”
The gun never disappeared, but by then the armed stranger beat McCoy with his gun and pulled Carla out of the car.
“Finally she said, ‘Stop hitting him, stop hitting him, I’m going with you,” McCoy said. Date line.
Together, in the final moments, McCoy said he recalled seeing Carla dragged by the attacker.
“I see Carla’s face and she screams. She screams. Rodney, get dad,” he said, the last thing she says. “That was the last time I saw her. I just – I first came out in my seat.”
McCoy regained consciousness after a while and rushed to Walker’s house.
Carla’s sister, Cindy Stone, remembered hearing McCoy pound at the family door after 1am.
“He was … bleeding from his head, bleeding from his shirt too, he was just screaming,” she said.
McCoy continues to repeat, “They have her,” telling the family someone has attacked the couple in the parking lot of their bowling lot.
The family was called 911, but Carla’s dad couldn’t wait for the police and grabbed a gun and headed to the bowling alley. By then there were no signs of Cara or the assailant.
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Carla Walker’s body has been discovered
The next few days passed with a tragic haze as the desperate family tried to find their missing daughter. McCoy stayed at Walker’s house, waiting for news of the incident.
Four days after Carla disappeared, her body was discovered by a dark vert patrol officer in the countryside, under a path about nine miles from the location of aidation. She was sexually assaulted, strangled and had massive cuts on her thighs and legs.
“She was on her back and her clothes were torn apart,” recalls an investigator at a police crime scene in Fort Worth. “She had a bruise on her neck.”
The Fort Worth Police Department was one of the few police stations of the time, and its own crime lab, with authorities meticulous attention to evidence from the scene. Although there was no DNA technology at the time, I had been carefully storing Carla’s clothes from that night.
McCoy was with Carla’s sister when he received the news that his girlfriend had died.
“Cindy is holding me, we are both crying and you can feel your heart falling down, and that’s when it’s finished,” he said.
Carla Walker Cases are getting cold
There were few clues to proceed, but the remote dark vert where the body was found was not visible from the road, so investigators concluded that anyone who killed Cara was familiar with the area and planned an attack.
McCoy told police he didn’t remember much about the attacker, but the teenager was happy to be hypnotized to try and remember details of the night. It may have been an unconventional tactic, but it helped the police create sketches of the temptation. He described the man with short hair and “skinny noses” wearing a green sleeveless jacket and a cowboy hat.
In the bowling alley’s car park, they spotted Carla’s wallet and a magazine about Luger Pistols.
However, investigators still had to consider the possibility that McCoy was the murderer, and created an elaborate tale of lures to cover his truck.
To dig deeper into his story, police asked the other couples who were in the car that night, but there was no obvious red flag.
“The brief moment we were together was everything was so easy,” recalled Brenda Wells of the car ride. “We just had a good time.”
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Carla’s friends, and even her family, continued to support McCoy, claiming that he never hurt her.
“My parents loved him and trusted him,” Jim said.
McCoy also passed two polygraph tests and continued to declare his innocence.
As they expanded the search, authorities got a list from federal authorities of everyone in the area who had registered Luger pistols and each interviewed, but they were unable to identify the killer.
Investigators look at Carla Walker’s case new
Decades passed without a response before Jim contacted Fort Worth police in 2018 and asked him to take a new look at his sister’s case. By then, authorities had been able to obtain partial DNA profiles of unknown men who left semen staining in Carla’s dress, but the samples were very small and were unable to obtain the full profile.
Two new detectives worked on the case and created a list of more than 80 suspects, including McCoy.
They also reviewed possible physical evidence of the case, and with the help of Othram Labs, they were able to construct a complete DNA profile using samples found on Carla’s Bra straps, and used genetic genealogies to identify the killer family surnames.
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Who killed Carla Walker?
They tied their DNA to a man named Glenn Samuel McCurley. McCurry was on the suspect’s original list as he was one of the men in the area who owned the Luger pistol. However, McCurry, who lived less than two miles from Carla’s house, said at the time the weapon was stolen and excluded after passing the polygraph test.
McCulley was arrested in September 2020. After he was brought in for questioning, he confessed to killing Kara.
“I think I did that,” he said. He then tearfully admitted that he was drunk that night and was looking for a victim.
In a spectacular move in court, McCurry, now a much older man, stopped halfway through the judge, agreed to plead guilty to murder and was sentenced to life in prison.
McCulley was also considered an interested person in the murders of three other people, but he may have taken away the secrets he had in the grave about those cases. McCulley passed away in prison in July 2021.
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What happened to Carla Walker’s boyfriend, Rodney McCoy?
As for McCoy, he moved to Alaska to escape memory, married and gave birth to his own children, then returned to Texas a few years later and divorced. He continues to be troubled by memories of his girlfriend he once loved
“Carla saved my life,” he said. “I wish it was the other way around.”
