Title: Fort Worth, Texas Young Women Serial Murders

Dates: 1984 - 1985

Overview:A string of young females are involved in brutal homicides.

Status: Cold Case.

Fort Worth Serial Murders

Between September 1984 and January 1985 a string of brutal homicides and disappearances spread fear among the female residents of Tarrant County, Texas. Four young women and a teenage girl would lose their lives before the crime spree ended, as mysteriously as it had begun. Police have yet to name a suspect in the case.

On the night of September 30, 1984, firefighters were called to an apartment occupied by 23 year old Cindy Davis, on the citys southwest side. They extinguished a small fire, traced to a cigarette dropped on the bed, but there was no sign if Davis, an aspiring model. Neighbors reported the sound of voices raised in anger and a car racing away from the scent, shortly before the blaze erupted, but their statements gave police no further leads.

Three weeks later, on October 22, 23 year old Cindy Heller stopped to help stranded motorist Kazumi Gillespie on Fort Worths southwest side. Though the women were strangers, they spent the next two hours in a tavern, while Gillespie tried on vain to telephone a friend. Then they at last split up, Gillespie remained at the bar, while Heller agreed to drive by the friends house and leave a note on his door. The note was waiting when he came home at midnight, but Cindy Heller had vanished. Her car was found the next morning, its interior gutted by fire, with dry blood smeared on one door handle. No trace could be found of its owner, a two time contestant in local beauty pageants.

Police noted striking similarities in the two apparent kidnappings, victims of identical age and given names, missing in circumstances that included suspicious fires, but they were not prepared to link the cases yet. Shortly after midnight on December 10, 1984, Angela Ewart left her fiances home in the Wedgewood section of southwest Fort Worth, stopping for gas at a station nearby. From there, the 21 year old model and one time beauty contestant vanished into limbo, her car discovered the next morning, doors locked, with a broken knife lying nearby. A flat tire, reported to police by a passing motorist, had been swapped with a spare by the time patrolmen arrived on the scene.

On December 30, 1984, 15 year old Sara Kashka left her home in Denton, Texas, for a party in Fort Worth, arriving to find the festivities canceled. Sarahs date dropped her off at a Wedgewood apartment, near the gas station where Angela Ewart was last seen alive, but Kashkas bad luck continued. The friends she intended to visit were out for the evening, and Sarah had vanished before they came home. Two days later, her corpse, torn by stab wounds, was found in a marshy area near Mountain Creek, in southwest Dallas. Police initially treated her murder as a separate case from the three disappearance, citing a difference we really cant talk about, but they later hedged that bet. As Detective Ben Dumas told reporters, We cant establish any thread, because we only have on girl found.

That changed on January 5, 1985, when children playing on the campus of Texas Christian University stumbled over Cindy Hellers decomposing body. She had been tortured, strangled, and beheaded, her skull retrieved from a nearby lake four days later. That same day, January 5, 20 year old Lisa Griffin was found shot to death, execution style, in southwest Fort Worth. Sheriffs investigators charged a former mental patient with that murder, but he was released when his fingerprints failed to match others lifted from Griffins abandoned car.

A final, grisly twist was added to the case on January 23, 1985, when construction workers uncovered human bones beside some railroad tracks, 10 miles south of the Wedgewood murder zone. The skeletal remains were identified as those of Cindy Davis, missing since September, but the find brought authorities no closer to a suspect in the case. Angela Ewart and Sarah Kashka remain missing, the five crimes unsolved.

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