Carla Walker: Texas cheerleader's brutal 1974 murder gets fresh probe as new DNA evidence is uncovered
With new and reliable methods of DNA testing now available, many cold cases have started resurfacing in recent times.
One such case is of cheerleader Carla Walker who died around 46 years ago in 1974 after literally being snatched from the arms of her boyfriend. Oxygen's new documentary 'The DNA of Murder with Paul Holes' looks at Walker's case with the hopes of finding some new leads.
The Kidnapping
On February 16, 1974, Carla Walker was out on a date with her boyfriend Rodney McCoy. She was abducted from a parking lot in Fort Worth in Texas and her body was found around three days later. On the night she was kidnapped, Walker and McCoy had attended a Valentine's Day dance.
They had then stopped by to party with some friends after which they went to a local bowling alley to use the restrooms. They were attacked when they were returning to McCoy's car in the parking lot of the bowling alley.
According to McCoy, he was beaten unconscious and when he woke up, Walker was nowhere to be seen. He told the police that the suspect was a white male who looked to be approximately 5 foot 10 inches tall.
Rodney McCoy
"From what I remember, we were talking, and we started kissing. And she was leaning up against the door, and the door just jerked open," McCoy revealed. He shared that the attacker had started to hit him from above repeatedly.
"Carla was screaming, ‘Quit hitting him,’ so my assumption, he hit me several times. Blood was just flowing down in my eyes and my face and everything, and it was like I was paralyzed," he said. He also told investigators how the attacker had stuck a gun in his face and had tried to pull the trigger repeatedly but the gun did not go off.
McCoy also remembers Walker yelling at him "go get my dad" as he fell unconscious. He then went to Walker's house to tell the family. According to the family, the doorbell rang and there was intense banging on the door.
McCoy was seen screaming "They’ve got her, they’ve got her!" with blood flowing down his head. He also recalled her last words as being "Go get help, I’ll go with you, don’t hurt him."
Sexually Motivated Crime
Cold case investigator Paul Holes believes that Walker's murder was a "sexually motivated homicide" that looked to be "predatory" in nature. Walker's body had been found on February 20 in a culvert beneath a rural road south of Fort Worth.
Her clothes had been ripped and she had been strangled to death. The police shared that she was also beaten up and sexually assaulted before she was killed and had morphine in her system.
The Suspect
According to detective Leah Wagner from the Fort Worth Police Department, the suspects include a man named Tommy Ray Kneeland. In the same year that Carla was killed, Kneeland had attempted to kidnap a teenage girl in nearby Arlington and had tried to sexually assault her but she had escaped.
Kneeland was identified by the girl after which he confessed to committing three murders. He was sentenced to life in prison but was paroled in 1987. He had to return to custody after he violated the terms of his parole.
Current Status
DNA testing is currently underway and there have been "multiple sources of male DNA located," Holes revealed.