Boyfriend recalls last words Carla Walker said before abduction in Fort Worth trial
A man described to a Tarrant County courtroom Friday the harrowing night nearly 50 years ago when he was beaten with a pistol as his 17-year-old girlfriend was abducted beside him.
The last words Carla Walker ever said to Rodney McCoy, the now 65-year-old man testified Friday, were “Go get my dad.”
The trial of Glen McCurley, accused of murdering Carla in Fort Worth in 1974, started Friday after jury selection finished on Thursday.
Family members and friends of Carla waited outside the Tarrant County criminal district courtroom at 8:30 a.m. Jim Walker, Carla’s younger brother, seemed confident and eager for the trial to begin as he greeted people in the hall. Cindy Stone, Carla’s older sister, was more anxious, worried about what she would hear within the courtroom. They have waited for answers about that night their whole adult lives, but she worried some answers might be painful to hear.
During opening statements, prosecutor Emily Dixon explained to the jury that unlike in modern-day cases, she would not be able to show them videos of Carla or let them hear her voice through audio. Instead, Dixon would share Carla’s voice with the jury through the stories of witnesses.
Steven Miears, one of McCurley’s defense attorneys, told the jury while they know Carla was kidnapped and murdered, it was up to the 12 men and women to decide if McCurley is the man guilty of those crimes. McCurley, who was arrested in 2020 after DNA evidence linked him to the case, has pleaded not guilty to the charge of capital murder.
During cross-examination of witnesses, defense attorneys seemed to be making an argument that the crime scene could have been contaminated. They questioned if gloves or shoe covers were used at the scene and how evidence was tested.
The attack
McCoy was the first witness to take the stand Friday.
The night of Feb. 16, 1974, McCoy was late to pick up Carla for the Western Hills High School Valentine’s Dance. He had forgotten Carla’s corsage in his fridge, he explained to the courtroom Friday from the witness stand, and knew he would rather be late than leave that behind. He got a “look” from Carla, who he had been dating for about a year, when he arrived late. The glare vanished as soon as he pinned the flowers to her light blue dress.
As McCoy talked about his relationship with Carla, an array of emotions were evident on the 65-year-old’s face. He described a girl who “was the cutest thing I had ever seen” and always made him smile. As he sat on the witness stand, prosecutor Kim D’Avignon showed McCoy a photo of himself and Carla from the Valentine’s Day dance. His drawn face pulled into a smile. As the photo was passed to the defense attorneys, McCurley leaned slightly over from where he sat in a wheelchair and looked at the picture. McCoy stared at him from the stand.
The night of Carla’s disappearance, McCoy and Carla went to dinner and the dance, he explained as D’Avignon asked him about that night. Like most students, he and Carla snuck some alcoholic drinks in before the dance. Carla drank Bacardi Rum and Coca-Cola. After the dance, they headed to Taco Bell, where teens hung around in the packed parking lot. The bathroom was closed because it had been vandalized, so later in the night, Carla and McCoy parked in the Ridglea Bowl parking lot so she could use the bathroom. In his mom’s 1969 LTV, they started to kiss. Carla leaned against the passenger side door, her purse behind her head, and McCoy leaned over top of her. Suddenly, the door yanked open.
For Carla’s family, friends and community, the next few minutes have been recounted and described many times. But the courtroom was nearly silent Friday as McCoy described in detail what happened after the car door was ripped open, and his life changed.
He and Carla fell halfway out of the car, McCoy on top of her and facing her. He felt a blow to the back of his head. Blood ran down the front of his face. He only knew he was still being hit because Carla screamed, “Stop hitting him!”
Carla raised herself up and McCoy pushed himself back into the car, disoriented.
“It was such an intense ringing, I was totally stunned. I couldn’t move,” McCoy said. “I pushed myself up, blood was flowing, I was staring straight ahead.”
The man who had hit McCoy over the head grabbed Carla. McCoy said he could not tell if she was pulled from the car, but she suddenly was not in the seat next to him. The gun hit him again on the cheek, slashing his face. The man pointed the pistol at McCoy and pulled the trigger three times. The gun did not go off. Bleeding and losing consciousness, McCoy saw the abductor start to walk, taking Carla with him.
“Carla turned her face to me and — I can visualize it — and said, ‘Rodney go get dad. Go get my dad,’” McCoy said. “Those were the last words I heard from Carla.”
After McCoy finished explaining the attack, a silence fell over the courtroom for a few moments.
McCoy continued his testimony to describe his frantic drive to the Walkers’ home and the hysteria that ensued when he told them what happened. Carla’s dad grabbed his gun and went to the bowling alley. McCoy went to the hospital and then back to the Walkers’.
Carla’s mom and dad, McCoy said, were trying to be strong during the search for their daughter. As McCoy recalled the hopelessness he and the family felt, several family members and friends in the courtroom wiped their eyes of tears.
Days later, Carla’s body was found in a culvert near Benbrook Lake.
“They lost their daughter,” McCoy said, choked up. “Their sweet daughter.”
In cross examination, defense attorney Eric Nickols asked McCoy if he remembered telling police initially that a group of people took Carla. McCoy said he did not remember saying that to police. Nickols asked if he remembered looking at a suspect lineup at the time and telling a friend that one of the men was the kidnapper. McCoy said he did not remember that either.
As McCoy walked out of the courtroom after his testimony was over, he passed Jim Walker in the front row. McCoy briefly touched him on the shoulder and left the room.
Law enforcement takes the stand
Several witnesses who worked on Carla’s case in 1974 followed McCoy’s testimony.
Darrell Thompson took the stand in a blue button-up shirt. He swiveled slightly in the chair as he answered questions about how he, as a patrol officer with Fort Worth police from 1969 to 1980, was the officer who found Carla’s body.
He and a partner were searching around Benbrook Lake on the chilly February day. They stopped on a small road in the mostly unpopulated area, surrounded on either side by large fields. A small creek ran through the field, and Thompson stopped at the stream to peer into an 8-foot-tall culvert that yawned into the creek. Inside, he saw Carla’s body splayed in the darkness.
Because the culvert was outside of Fort Worth city limits, the Tarrant County Sheriff’s Office worked with Fort Worth police to investigate the crime scene.
During testimony, former crime scene investigator Jack Boulton explained how he used a color video camera to capture the scene where Carla’s body was found. The department’s cameras only shot in black-and-white. The color video shown on a projector in the courtroom was grainy and jumpy, but the image of Carla’s body was still clear enough to elicit a gasp from someone in the courtroom. When photos captured from the video were shown, several people in then room seemed visibly shaken.
In cross examination of Thompson, Boulton and two other law enforcement officers, defense attorney Nickols questioned how the crime scene was handled in 1974. He asked each man if crime scene investigators handled evidence properly. Jim Minter, who was the lead investigator in the case with the Tarrant County Sheriff’s Office, said he remembers everything being handled according to protocol. He said he could not remember if everyone wore gloves at the crime scene.
James Bennett, who was an investigator with FWPD at the time, said crime scene investigators would have worn gloves at the scene when handling evidence. Boulton said he could not remember if everyone who dealt with the crime scene wore gloves, but they may have.
Nickols also questioned law enforcement about several people who, he said, came forward over the years and told law enforcement they had killed Carla. Minter said each person who claimed to have taken Carla did not remember vital details of the crime and were eliminated as suspects after they were investigated. One of the main suspects who said he committed the crime was “profoundly mentally ill,” Minter confirmed when asked by Dixon, and may have confessed while in custody in Tennessee in order to be extradited to Texas.
Bennett also said those confessions — which he said were likely not recorded — did not match the facts of the case.
Minter said he and other detectives kept working on the case well into their retirement.
DNA evidence
Detective Leah Wagner started working on the case in February 2020. On Friday, she described how advances in DNA technology allowed Fort Worth police to match McCurley’s DNA with sperm found on Carla’s bra.
During testimony Friday, she and state prosecutors slowly unearthed pieces of evidence from Carla’s case from a large cardboard box. Wagner, Dixon and D’Avignon wore blue gloves as they handled the decades-old clothes to show to the jurors.
D’Avignon pulled out the shirt McCoy was wearing the night he and Carla were attacked. The off-white button down was covered in rusty brown spots from dried blood. The attorneys unfolded the powder blue dress Carla was wearing the night she was abducted. The sleeveless gown was tattered and wrinkled from years inside an evidence bag. The women held the garment up, revealing splatters of dried blood and missing pieces where the dress had been cut up for evidence.
Wagner explained how the Fort Worth Police Department utilized new DNA technology to uncover a full DNA profile from male DNA found on Carla’s bra. The DNA was tested through the Serological Research Institute in Richmond, California, nd Othram, a forensic genealogy lab based in Houston.
In September 2020, Wagner and her partner, Jeff Bennett, interviewed McCurley at his Fort Worth home about the case. Prosecutors played about 20 minutes of audio from the interview on Friday. Most of the conversation was small talk, but about 10 minutes in, Wagner asked McCurley about Carla’s case in 1974 and why he had been interviewed.
McCurley replied that police questioned him initially because he bought a magazine for his .22 Ruger, the same type of gun used during Carla’s abduction. He told Wagner what he told police in ‘74 — the Ruger was stolen from his truck while he was fishing and he did not have it at the time of Carla’s abduction.
During cross examination, attorney Nickols honed in on the question of whether cross contamination was possible in this case and with the evidence police used to charge McCurley. He asked if detectives in 1974 may have interviewed McCurley and inadvertently touched a piece of evidence, transferring McCurley’s DNA onto the bra. Wagner said it was unlikely because evidence had already been sealed and packaged in the evidence room and police typically wore gloves when handling evidence.
Wagner did say that many people have handled the evidence over the years and some detectives likely followed protocol about handling evidence better than others.
The judge dismissed court for the day at about 4 p.m. The trial will pick up again on Monday at 8:30 a.m.
This story was originally published August 20, 2021 at 1:46 PM.
