Glen McCurley changes plea to guilty in Carla Walker murder trial in Fort Worth
The man who murdered a 17-year-old girl in Fort Worth 47 years ago changed his plea to guilty suddenly during the third day of his trial.
Glen McCurley, 78, pleaded guilty Tuesday morning to the capital murder of Carla Walker and was sentenced to life in prison.
Carla Walker’s friends and family cried and hugged one another in the courtroom at about 8:45 a.m., 15 minutes after Tarrant County Criminal District Court No. 1 started session for the day. McCurley’s shift from a not guilty plea to guilty was swift and unexpected.
Carla’s sister, Cindy Stone, and her brother, Jim Walker, said they were relieved but still processing the change of events. A prosecutor, Kim D’Avignon, pulled the two out of the courtroom shortly after 8:30 a.m. She told them McCurley intended to change his plea. When they came back into the courtroom, McCurley signed a piece of paper, and Judge Elizabeth Beach said he was found guilty of capital murder and sentenced to life.
Jim Walker and Stone read victim impact statements before the court. Stone took the witness stand first.
“I wish you had done this a long time ago,” she said. “I spent 17 years in the same bedroom as my sister. I knew her. She was 4’11” and 100 pounds. You had choices, lots of choices that night. And you went out to kill somebody. ... And you’re still not telling the truth about everything you did. ... You know that you raped her and you strangled her and dumped her in the culvert.”
“I want to know if you’ve done this to anybody else, you need to bring that out, because those families need to know, too,” Stone said. “You have nothing to lose at this point. Because it’s been hell.”
On Monday, the court watched a three-hour videotaped interview between Fort Worth police Detectives Leah Wagner and Jeff Bennett and McCurley after his arrest in September. Over the course of the interview, McCurley eventually confessed to killing Carla in February 1974, but denied he raped her and claimed he was helping her get away from her boyfriend, Rodney McCoy, during an argument in McCoy’s car.
According to testimony and case evidence, McCurley opened the passenger side door of McCoy’s car while the couple were parked in a bowling alley parking lot, beat McCoy over the head with a pistol and abducted Carla. Her body was found three days later in a culvert near Benbrook Lake. She had been raped, beaten and strangled.
“So many things you’re saying I know is a lie,” Stone said to McCurley from the witness stand. “I knew her character, I knew Rodney’s character. ... There is no way he would be hitting her. It just didn’t happen.”
McCurley sat in a wheelchair next to his defense attorneys. He watched Stone intently during her testimony.
“If I had the choice to give you your sentence,” Stone told him, “It would be strangulation and dumped in a culvert.”
“I hope you step into prison and the first day you step in there is the best day of your life in there, and every day after that, you pay. To me, it’s not cruel,” she said. “It’s just justice, justice for Carla.”
Jim Walker, 60, gave his victim impact statement from the middle of the courtroom, a few feet away from McCurley, because he is visually impaired and wanted to be able to see McCurley as he spoke.
“I want to say something to you,” Walker said, clutching a tissue. “I was 12 years old on the night that demonic spirit that we now know to be Glen Samuel McCurley was out hunting.”
He told McCurley about the night that Carla died and how a fun night with his family — cousins and other relatives playing dominoes in the living room, and his parents waiting for their daughter to come home and tell them about her night at the Western Hills High School Valentine’s Dance — became a nightmare.
McCoy pounded on the door, Jim Walker said, and told the family Carla needed help. Walker’s father grabbed his gun and went to the bowling alley.
“I wish he had found you that night,” Walker said. “He would have dispatched you. With intent, with malice.”
Walker told McCurley that for years, he was consumed by rage over what happened to his sister. He imagined getting McCurley alone in an isolated space, he said, and hoped to find him somehow. Later in life, he found peace through God and forgave McCurley, in a way.
“Something you need to hear, McCurley — I don’t know why, you don’t deserve it — there is thing called God,” he said. “You aren’t here because of the actions of men. You are here because God had plans.”
Walker spoke to McCurley about McCurley’s son Craig, who died when a drunk driver crashed into him. Craig was buried in the same cemetery as Carla.
“You did it intentionally. And that shows the type of psychopath, neurotic, crazy, parasitic person you are,” Walker said. “You buried your boy a 30-second walk from her grave. You dishonored your boy. What kind of a man are you? Not much.”
McCurley lived within the community he shattered. His sons went to the same school Carla attended. Jim Walker was at Western Hills High School at the same time Craig was. Every time McCurley went to the school or grocery shopping, he likely passed the Walkers’ home. His children walked over the memorial plaque for Carla in the high school.
“What you meant for evil, God meant for good,” Walker said. “You started an army, and the army is watching. We were all hunters, hunting for you. I knew you heard the marching coming out to you. And that was God too coming after you.”
During his testimony Monday afternoon, Detective Bennett, who works for the Fort Worth Police Department’s Cold Case Unit, described how he and Wagner reopened the case in 2019 and identified McCurley after a months-long forensics process revealed McCurley’s DNA matched semen samples found on Carla’s clothing.
“I took advantage of her, I guess,” McCurley said during the videotaped interview with the detectives. “I choked her to death, I guess.”
He told the 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 in the video.
“I guess,” he says.
Glen McCurley’s family
After McCurley was sentenced, the courtroom was filled with people hugging one another and wiping their eyes. McCurley’s son Roddy McCurley walked across the room and approached Jim Walker. They embraced for several minutes — Roddy McCurley cried into Walker’s collared shirt, and Walker whispered into his ear and held him.
Glen McCurley’s wife, Judy, was also in the courtroom and talked with Carla’s family members. After everyone flowed out of the courtroom and into the hall, she said she thought of her own son’s death during the trial. She said the drunk driver who killed her son told them at the time, “There is nothing I can say, and nothing I can do to bring your son back.”
“And that’s how I feel,” she said.
Judy’s sister, Barbara Adams, said they are “so sorry that a member of our family has caused so much pain for another family.”
“And our hearts break for them,” she said.
During both their victim impact statements, Walker and Stone told McCurley how he had not only hurt the Walker family for years, but he had also victimized his own family. During a previous interview, Walker talked about his compassion for the family of the man who murdered his sister, and how they are victims of McCurley’s malice as much as he is.
Adams said her brother-in-law not only shattered Carla’s family, but his own, as well. All their memories together, her photo albums of the family, are tarnished by McCurley’s guilt.
Walker’s immediate thoughts after the trial, just minutes after his sister’s killer had finally been held accountable, were for the McCurley family.
Walker and McCurley’s son have been in touch for several weeks, Walker said, and he wants to have a good relationship with him. That compassion comes straight from God, Walker said.
“His world is shattered,” Walker said. “My heart goes out to him. All I can do is give all the glory to God.”
D’Avignon, the prosecuting attorney, said it was “a tribute to the Walker family and to the McCurley family that they were willing to walk across the aisle and really understand that what happened in this courtroom and what happened in 1974 was not about Mr. McCurley’s children. It was not about his wife. It was about him.”
“If we could take one takeaway for the whole world on this case, it would be that Jim Walker and Cindy (Stone) have nothing but love for the son of the man who killed their sister,” she said. “Sometimes you see beautiful things in the courthouse. And that might be one of the most beautiful things I have ever seen.”
‘I feel peaceful’
When asked how he felt after the trial, Walker said, “Peaceful. Peaceful. Peaceful.”
“We’re glad and happy, and I feel happy for our community,” he said. “I feel sadness for the McCurleys that are survivors of this. But overall, I feel peaceful.”
Stone said the reality of McCurley’s guilty plea had not sunk in yet. She stood by the elevators after the trial, clutching a gold-framed photo of Carla.
“But what I do feel is relief,” she said.
They both thanked the Fort Worth Police Department, especially the detectives who reopened the case, and the Tarrant County Criminal District Attorney’s Office for helping them get justice. They also credited the community who kept Carla’s memory alive all these years and her friends who never stopped searching for answers.
D’Avignon and prosecutor Emily Dixon said the guilty plea from McCurley was emotional for them, too.
“We never had a chance to meet Carla, but we met Jim and Cindy Walker. Through them, we know how loved Carla was,” D’Avignon said. “There is a lot of blood, sweat and tears that go into a case like this. And we were so grateful the Walker family trusted us with the memory and legacy of Carla.”
The forensic genealogy testing used in McCurley’s case is still new to the criminal justice system. The family, D’Avignon said, wants to start a foundation to raise money to use the new technology for other cases.
The same process was used to catch the Golden State Killer. D’Avignon said she believes this may be the first case that used forensic genealogy that has gone to trial.
Stone and Walker hope McCurley tells the entire story of what happened that night at some point. His denial that he raped and beat Carla, for example, frustrates them. They also worry McCurley has other victims. Walker and Stone do not think Carla’s murder was the only time McCurley attacked a woman. D’Avignon said she also is concerned about the possibility of other victims, and she hopes this case paves for the way for more cold cases to be solved in Fort Worth. Perhaps within the boxes of murder cases lies another victim of McCurley, they said.
“This is not a club any of us want to be a member of,” Walker said. “But I thank God for our family, I thank God for our community. Nobody ever gave up. And that is my message out to other families like Carla Walker’s. You’re the voice for your loved one.”
This story was originally published August 24, 2021 at 9:15 AM.
