Case History
The victim was located near Interstate 35 in a culvert outside of Georgetown, Texas. The culvert is located 9.4 miles south of the Williamson / Bell County line. The victim was killed by strangulation hours before her body was discovered.
Two matchbooks were found at the scene; one was from a Motel 6, the other from a Holiday Inn in Henryetta, Oklahoma. The only other evidence was determined to be a makeshift sanitary napkin, which was labeled among the evidence as a bloody towel.
The serial killer Henry Lee Lucas confessed to the victim's murder in 1982, three years after her death. He informed authorities that he picked her up while she was hitchhiking in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma the day before her murder in 1979. He claimed that her name may have been "Judy" or "Joanie." Lucas was convicted of her murder in 1984 and sentenced to death; he recanted his confession shortly thereafter. Texas Governor George W. Bush commuted Lucas' death sentence to life in prison shortly before his execution due to the doubt which emerged in this case.
Aside from Lucas' possible involvement in this case, authorities are searching for an anonymous female caller who phoned them on three separate occasions with information regarding this case. The caller claimed that she saw the victim hitchhiking near Georgetown, Texas the day of her murder.