Was it a policeman? I mean, was it one of us? …Was it a wannabe policeman, you know a volunteer fireman? I mean somebody we’re close with, somebody we drink coffee with? And, you just didn’t know,’ Goetschius said. 'You had Jessica Cain, with just the vehicle beside the road. The quick succession of disappearances forced detectives Mike Land and Brian Goetschius to reinvigorate their search for the girls’ killers. Her body and killer has never been found. The 17-year-old’s pickup truck was found abandoned beside Interstate 45. 'Our lives as a family were totally shattered,’ her mother Gay Smither told CBS.įour months later, aspiring actress Jessica Cain mysteriously vanished. Seventeen days after her disappearance, Laura’s nude, decomposing body was found in a pond 12 miles north of the town. A year after Krystal’s disappearance, 12-year-old Laura Smither was abducted while jogging on her street in the middle-class community of Friendswood, south of Houston. It was just a miracle that he got caught.’īut the grieving families of most of the other victims worry that the killers may have got away with it. ‘I had given up hope, and I just assumed the guy got away with it,’ Jeanie Baker said. Her body was found on November 3 at the edge of a Dickinson High School practice field. Teressa Vanegas, 16, (right) was last seen leaving the Green Caye subdivision on the night of October 31, 2006. Her body was found the next day in Galveston Bay near Pelican Island. Unsolved: Brenda Jones, 14, (left) of Galveston, Texas, was last seen walking to visit an aunt on July 1, 1971. His DNA matched samples from stains found on the dress and underwear that Krystal was wearing on the day her body was found covered in scratches and cuts. I wished I could have stayed in that dream a little longer.’Īuthorities finally made a breakthrough in her daughter’s case following a DNA test performed on Smith when he was arrested for an unrelated charge in Louisiana in 2010.
Everything OK.” And I woke up the next day. ‘And she told me one time, she says, “Mama, I’m just out here hangin’ out with my friends. And every once in a while when she’s a teenager,’ she told CBS. ‘I dream about her mostly when she was a little girl. Jeanie Baker, the mother of Krystal, who is related to Marilyn Monroe, says she is still haunted by the memories of her daughter with ‘a heart of gold’. Unsolved cases to put an end to the misery of victims’ familiesĪnd bring the killer – or killers – to justice. Although no deaths have been reported in the last few years, police are determined to chip away at the