‘I’m guilty.’ Man accused of murder in Fort Worth cold case confesses in video interview
The suspect in a 47-year-old cold case told Fort Worth detectives that he “just got carried away” when he strangled and killed a 17-year-old girl in 1974, according to a videotaped confession played during the second day of Glen McCurley’s trial Monday.
McCurley was arrested on Sept. 21, 2020, at his Fort Worth home and accused of the kidnapping, rape and murder of 17-year-old Carla Walker. McCurley, who is charged with capital murder and faces life in prison if convicted, is pleading not guilty.
In 1974, Carla was abducted, raped and choked to death before her body was dumped in a culvert. On Friday, Carla’s high school boyfriend described in emotional testimony about how Carla was yanked from the car as the couple sat in a parking lot after going to Western Hills High School’s Valentine’s Dance. Rodney McCoy was severely beaten with a pistol during Carla’s kidnapping outside a bowling alley in the Fort Worth area.
Friends and family of Carla, who have waited for nearly 50 years for answers, watched footage of McCurley’s confession to Fort Worth police during court Monday. Many wiped away tears, and when the court paused for a 10-minute recess, some women hugged and cried in the halls and bathroom.
Fort Worth detectives John Bennett and Leah Wagner, who testified Friday, were the primary detectives who reopened Carla’s case in 2019. During his testimony Monday afternoon, Bennett described how he and Wagner identified McCurley after a months-long forensics process revealed McCurley’s DNA matched semen samples found on Carla’s clothing.
Tarrant County prosecutors showed footage of the interview, which was about three hours long, to jurors Monday on a projector. During the entire time the video played, McCurley sat in the courtroom beneath the projector in a wheelchair. He looked into his hands most of the time, occasionally glancing up at the footage of himself telling detectives what happened 47 years ago.
‘What did you say her name was?’
The video begins with McCurley, in blue jeans and a gray polo, being brought into the small Fort Worth Police Department interview room. He sits in a yellow chair and leans his head on his hand.
Wagner and Bennett walk into the room. Wagner puts a photo of Carla on the table in front of McCurley.
“We are looking into the murder of Carla Walker,” Wagner says without preamble to McCurley. “We know what happened. Our evidence has led us to you. There are no ‘ifs, ands or buts’ about it. I know you’re confused but you shouldn’t be. This is your opportunity to tell us your side.”
Before McCurley can reply, Wagner tells him this is his chance to tell them anything “that doesn’t make you look like a monster.” She asks him if he understands his rights and agrees to willingly talk with the detectives.
Without giving a clear answer, McCurley continues talking to the detectives. This repeats several times, with the detectives trying to clarify if McCurley consents to waiving his rights. Eventually, he says, “I agree to talk because I haven’t done anything.”
He looks at the photo of Carla.
“I have never seen her before. I don’t know who she is,” he says. “What did you say her name was?”
Detectives ask him about why police interviewed him in 1974. Wagner and Bennett previously talked with McCurley for about an hour-and-a-half a few weeks prior to obtaining his consent for a DNA sample. He repeats what he told them during that interview — that police initially flagged him as a suspect and interviewed him in 1974 because he bought a magazine clip for his gun — the same type of gun used in Carla’s abduction. He goes into a detailed story of how his gun was stolen.
“I don’t believe a word coming out of your mouth,” Wagner tells him. “You know why? I know you had something to do with this little girl dying. You kidnapped her, you took her and you killed her. You did it. You did. We know you did.”
“How do you know I did?” he asks.
“Forty-six years is a very long time to just point a finger at little old man,” Wagner says. “Carla was 17 years old. Seventeen. She had a family. She had a boyfriend she was going to marry. And you took that away from her.”
McCurley continues to deny his involvement.
“I did not kidnap anybody,” McCurley says at one point, his voice rising. He starts to cry. The detectives leave the room briefly. The video continues, showing McCurley by himself in the interview room. The courtroom was silent except for the occasional sound of McCurley sniffling on the video recording.
When Wagner and Bennett come back into the room, they tell McCurley they have DNA evidence that proves his semen was on Carla’s clothes.
“We don’t want to believe that you’re a horrible person,” Wagner says. “Was it a bad night? Your wife was out of town? You were drinking?”
“So what? I convict myself I guess?” McCurley replies. “I’m going to go to the electric chair. I’m going to be hung.”
McCurley says if he goes to prison, he cannot take care of his wife.
McCurley breaks down and starts to cry. Wagner moves toward him and hands him a tissue.
“I did do it,” McCurley says.
‘I choked her to death, I guess’
Over the next hour or so of the interview, Wagner and Bennett ask McCurley about the details of that night, and he gradually tells them more about what happened. McCurley goes back and forth on the details of the story throughout his interview with detectives, at times backtracking or denying something he seemed to previously admit.
McCurley tells the detectives he was drinking whiskey and beers that Saturday night and driving around the town. He says he heard Carla screaming in the car in the bowling alley parking lot. He went over to the car and a man was beating on her, he says, so she pulled her out of the car to help her. He took her to his car, he says, and Carla told him McCoy wanted her to have sex with him and they were arguing.
“She started hugging me, thanking me. One thing led to another,” McCurley says in the interview. “I did have sex with her.”
Bennett points out to him how unlikely it seems that Carla would argue with her boyfriend about not wanting to have sex and then have sex with McCurley, who was a stranger. But McCurley continues to deny he sexually assaulted her.
McCurley says he “tussled” with McCoy inside the car when he grabbed Carla, but initially insists he did not hit McCoy with a pistol. It is not until the last portion of the interview that McCurley tells detectives he used the pistol at all. McCoy, who testified on Friday, said he was hit over the head with a pistol multiple times. Law enforcement also testified that McCoy was beaten hard enough to knock him unconscious, require stitches and leave a lifelong scar.
McCurley says in the video that he took Carla into a nearby parking lot, but characterizes the sex between them as consensual. However, forensic evidence showed she was raped, according to court testimony. The detectives push back against his story and ask if McCurley raped her, and he eventually says yes.
“I took advantage of her, I guess,” McCurley said during the interview. “I choked her to death, I guess. I didn’t beat her up and all that kind of crap.”
He tells detectives he got scared that she “would tell on me.”
“I’m guilty,” he says in the interview. “I guess for what happened to that little girl.”
“Are you guilty of raping her and killing her?” Wagner asks.
“I guess,” he says.
The pistol
McCurley eventually describes to detectives where the gun he used in 1974 is hidden in his house. He tells them the pistol is wrapped inside a towel and hidden in the rafters of the attic.
In testimony after the video ended, Bennett told the court that police found a .22 Ruger pistol inside McCurley’s house where McCurley said it would be.
The pistol was shown as evidence during court, and prosecutor Kim D’Avignon held the unloaded gun up for jurors to see.
During cross examination, defense attorney Eric Nickols questioned Bennett about whether McCurley consented to his rights being waived at the beginning of the videotaped interview. Nickols emphasized that McCurley has cancer and diabetes and seemed confused about his rights. The defense initially tried to have the interview ruled inadmissible during a pretrial hearing. Judge Elizabeth Beach ruled McCurley had voluntarily waived his rights and agreed to talk through the “totality of the circumstances,” a precedent that has been set in previous cases.
Forensic evidence
Several forensic specialists testified Monday about how advances in DNA and forensic technology allowed a full DNA profile to be built based off of semen found on Carla’s bra and dress. The DNA profile was matched to McCurley, according to specialists from Othram, a forensic genealogy lab based in a Houston suburb, and the Serological Research Institute out of Richmond, California.
The defense questioned the legitimacy of the forensic genealogy used to match the semen on Carla’s clothes to McCurley.
Mallory Pagenkopf, a forensic serologist the Serological Research Institute, explained during her testimony how the institute extracted DNA from Carla’s clothing, such as her bra and dress. The institute used the samples to complete a DNA profile of “unknown male 1” and sent the sample to Othram.
John Fondon, a DNA expert with Othram, described how the Houston-based forensics lab used state-of-the-art parallel DNA sequencing and reconstructed the sample’s genome using a minuscule portion of the sample.
The DNA profile was eventually matched to a DNA sample police obtained from McCurley — first from a McDonald’s straw pulled from McCurley’s trash and then from a direct DNA sample that McCurley consented to.
Defense attorney Steven Miears pointed out that Othram is not an accredited lab in Texas. Upon cross-examination, Fondon explained that the type of forensics Othram uses is so new, state accreditation does not yet exist for it. Othram is working with the state to develop rules for this type of accreditation.
Miears also honed in on the specifics of the testing process used at the Serological Research Institute, saying that one of the analysts who worked on the DNA profile is not licensed in the state of Texas. Pagenkopf explained that one analyst is licensed in California but not yet licensed in Texas, and her role in the process was simply to place tubes into a machine and run the machine.
The trial will continue with the prosecution’s case on Tuesday.
This story was originally published August 23, 2021 at 7:45 PM.
