Arlington cold case murder suspect made detailed confessions to friends: warrant
The North Texas woman accused of the 1991 murder of Cynthia Gonzalez failed two polygraph tests and later confessed details of the killing to two people, including a man she was obsessed with and hoped to win back after the victim’s death, according to Arlington police.
Evidence that led to the suspect being charged in the 34-year-old cold case is revealed in an arrest warrant affidavit obtained by the Star-Telegram.
Cynthia Renee Gonzalez, 25, was reported missing in Arlington on Sept. 17, 1991. Gonzalez was shot to death and her body was found five days later in a rural area of Johnson County, police have said.
Detectives eliminated several potential suspects after polygraph tests, interviews and forensic tests. Homicide investigators pursued leads for years, but no arrests were made, and after 10 years the case was transferred to the cold case archives.
In May 2024, Arlington police Detective Anthony Stafford briefly reviewed the case file after Gonzalez’s daughter asked for an update on the investigation. The Arlington Police Department doesn’t have a cold case unit, but the detective agreed to continue to look into the case if time permitted. Then, in July 2025, the University of Texas at Arlington’s Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice launched a course to review cold cases with Arlington police. Gonzalez’s case was one of three that police initially chose for students to examine closely in hopes of developing new leads.
Stafford was intrigued by the students’ feedback and questions they raised about one suspect, Janie Perkins, who was known in 1991 as Janie Hatley. He decided to reopen the case, leading to the arrest of Perkins, 63, of Azle, last month on a charge of capital murder.
Killed in Arlington and dumped in rural North Texas
Gonzalez was believed to be working on the evening of Sept 16, 1991, the night before she was reported missing. According to the arrest warrant affidavit, Gonzalez operated and owned a “strip-a-gram” business called Beauty and the Beast Entertainment.
According to the affidavit, Gonzalez was supposed to meet a customer at the intersection of Cooper Street and Grand Avenue about 6:30 p.m. but she was not seen after this time period and “was believed to be taken against her will.”
Almost a week later, Gonzalez’s body was found in Johnson County “completely naked, decomposed, with what appeared to be multiple gunshot wounds to her chest,” Stafford wrote in the affidavit.
The discovery: Failed polygraphs and confessions
Gonzalez and Perkins shared a romantic partner, police said.
Approximately three weeks before Gonzalez’s murder, the man had revealed to Perkins that he wanted to end his relationship with her and that he only wanted to be with Gonzalez, according to the affidavit.
Perkins told detectives that she and the man were “soul mates” and he could “never be totally rid of her,” the affidavit states. Detectives said they discovered Perkins was obsessed with the man and “acted hysterically” when he broke up with her to pursue Gonzalez.
Detectives said that Perkins did not provide an alibi for the night Gonzalez was killed. She told them that she was off work and at home alone, “which did not add up to Janie’s behavior of the time” in 1991, the affidavit states.
Perkins took two polygraph examinations in 1991 in attempts to exclude her as a suspect, but the results of both indicated deception, investigators said.
The results suggested that Perkins had knowledge of who shot Gonzalez, might have been involved in planning her death and might have hired someone to kill her, police said. The polygrapher also believed that Perkins knew the identity of the person who killed Gonzalez, according to the affidavit.
During her interview with police at that time, Perkins admitted that “she had wished that the victim was dead and is glad that the victim is dead. She stated that she had thought about killing the victim or having the victim killed,” the affidavit says.
In 1993, Detective J. Ford was investigating the case when he was contacted by a man who was close to Perkins.
According to that friend, Perkins confessed to him that she was involved in killing Gonzalez, the affidavit states. The man told police that after Gonzalez’s body was found, Perkins asked him to be her alibi.
The man told Detective Ford that Perkins admitted in 1992 that she killed Gonzalez. When he expressed his love interest for Perkins, she told him they could not be together because she was “an evil person,” the affidavit states.
Perkins told the man that Gonzalez was “raped, shot with .44 magnum gun four or five times in the chest, and dumped in a ditch.” He also reported she said “police will never catch her because all the proof is gone ... it rained and washed away evidence from the scene,” according to the affidavit.
When detectives interviewed the other man who had been in relationships with both Perkins and Gonzalez, he told them that Perkins confessed in October 1991 to being involved in Gonzalez’s death. She described hearing the gunshots that killed the victim and said that there are people who will do anything for her, he told police. Perkins told him that “police will never find the gun” and “the clothes will never be found,” the affidavit states.
Perkins provided “unique details specific to the crime (of which) only someone involved would have knowledge,” Detective Stafford wrote in the affidavit. Gonzalez was in fact shot several times in the chest and the projectiles recovered were similar to what Perkins described, he wrote.
The affidavit also states that Perkins admitted leaving her keys in the victim’s car. Upon further review of the crime scene, an apartment key was found inside Gonzalez’s vehicle, police said.
Detectives believe Gonzalez met with her scheduled appointment for the evening and concluded by about 11:30 p.m. the night she went missing, the affidavit states. They believe that she then moved her car to the residential area where it was recovered, and met up with Perkins. It was common for the two women to meet up after work and at late hours to go party, according to the affidavit.
Based on the evidence, detectives believe that Perkins met Gonzalez under the “guise of going out,” then “facilitated, executed and participated in the abduction, murder and then disposal” of Gonzalez, according to the affidavit.
Perkins was arrested on Nov. 6 and booked in the Tarrant County Jail. She was released on $150,000 bond, according to jail records.