For nearly half a century, the Walker family lived with a nightmare they could not name. Every day, they wondered if the person who murdered 17-year-old Carla Walker in 1974 was someone they passed on the street, someone who smiled at them at church, someone who lived just a mile from their front door. The most terrifying part of a cold case, as Carla’s brother Jim Walker put it, is waking up every day asking, “Is that the person that killed my sister?”
For the Walker family, the answer was a devastating yes.
On February 17, 1974, Carla Walker and her boyfriend Rodney McCoy were attacked at a bowling alley parking lot in Fort Worth, Texas. A man ripped open the car door, grabbed Carla, and attempted to shoot Rodney. The gun malfunctioned, and the assailant beat Rodney with the weapon.
Carla screamed for help as she was taken. Rodney, bloodied and frantic, drove to the Walker home, pounding on the door and pleading, “They got her. They’re going to hurt her bad.”
Carla’s body was found three days later in a culvert near Benbrook Lake. She had been tortured, raped, and strangled. The community was shattered.
Parents locked doors they had never locked before. Children stopped going out alone. The case became the boogeyman of Fort Worth, a shadow that hung over the city for decades.
Investigators collected evidence meticulously, including a promise ring Rodney had given Carla, found near her body in the dirt.
For 47 years, the case grew cold. Detectives pursued leads, interviewed suspects, and ran down dead ends. A partial DNA profile was developed from Carla’s dress in 2009, but it yielded no matches in the national database.
The case seemed unsolvable. Then, in 2017, Carla’s brother Jim Walker reached out to Fort Worth Police Detective Leah Wagner. The family was frustrated, their parents had passed, and they desperately wanted answers.
Detective Wagner and her partner, Detective Jeff Bennett, took on the case. They pored over four large boxes of evidence and compiled a suspect list of 85 names. They re-interviewed witnesses and collected DNA samples.
But the key breakthrough came from a new technology: forensic genetic genealogy. After earlier DNA testing failed, a small, degraded sample from Carla’s bra was sent to a lab called Oram. Dr.
Kristen Middleman and her team worked tirelessly to extract a usable profile.
In July 2020, the genealogy led to a name: Glenn Samuel McCurley Jr. He had been on the original suspect list as a Ruger . 22 owner whose gun was allegedly stolen weeks before the murder.
He had even passed a polygraph in 1974. Now, DNA from a McDonald’s straw retrieved from his trash matched the profile from Carla’s bra. Detectives Wagner and Bennett visited McCurley at his home, just a mile from the Walker family’s house, and obtained a buccal swab.
The DNA match was conclusive. On September 24, 2020, Glenn McCurley was arrested. In a nearly two-hour interview, he initially denied involvement, then claimed he had intervened in a fight between Carla and Rodney.
Finally, he confessed: “How did you 𝓀𝒾𝓁𝓁 her? I just choked her.” He admitted to raping and strangling Carla.
He also led detectives to the hidden gun, a Ruger . 22, wrapped in a towel in a ceiling crawlspace of his home.
The trial began in August 2021. It was the first time forensic genetic genealogy was used in a Texas trial. The defense filed multiple motions to suppress the DNA evidence.
On the third day, as the court prepared to rule on admissibility, McCurley’s attorney approached the prosecution. “He wants to plead guilty,” he said. The judge sentenced McCurley to life in prison.
Jim Walker faced his sister’s killer in court and said, “Because of my relationship with God, I forgive you.”
But the story did not end there. McCurley had lived in the same community for 47 years, running a daycare with his wife, attending church, and being considered a wonderful man by everyone who knew him. He had buried his own son within sight of Carla’s grave.
The family was stunned. “The bad guy’s been in our backyard the entire time,” Jim Walker said. The case also raised suspicions about other victims.
McCurley was a truck driver who traveled to California, and detectives believe he may be linked to the 1973 murder of Becky Martin, found in a similar culvert.
McCurley died in prison in 2022, just two years into his sentence, before he could be questioned about other possible crimes. But his conviction brought a measure of justice to Carla’s family and to Rodney McCoy, who had lived under a cloud of suspicion for decades. Detectives returned Carla’s promise ring to Rodney.
When asked how he felt, he said simply, “Healed.”
The case inspired the Carla Walker Act, a pilot program to fund forensic genetic genealogy for cold cases across the country. Jim Walker said, “I want to help others that don’t have answers get the same thing.” The legislation aims to catch perpetrators and save future lives.
For the Walker family, the nightmare is over, but the mission continues. “We’re coming for you,” Detective Bennett warned. “If you’ve done this, best thing is to fess up, because we’re coming for you.”
