On September 21, 2020, a 77-year-old man answered his door in Fort Worth, Texas, and was arrested for a murder that had haunted the city for nearly half a century. The man, Glenn McCurley, was charged with the abduction and killing of Carla Walker, a 17-year-old cheerleader taken from a bowling alley parking lot in February 1974. The arrest came after a tiny DNA sample finally cracked a case that had grown cold decades earlier. Carla Jan Walker was born on January 31, 1957, to Leighton and Doris Walker.
Her father was a retired Air Force lieutenant colonel, and the family lived in Benbrook, on the far west side of Fort Worth. Carla was a junior and a cheerleader at Western Hills High School. Described as a “little spitfire,” she stood just 4-foot-11 with long honey-blonde hair and was remembered for smiling at nearly everyone she passed. Her boyfriend, Rodney McCoy, was the school’s quarterback.
The couple planned to attend Texas Tech together and talked of marriage. Rodney had given Carla a promise ring she wore proudly. On the night of February 16, 1974, Carla and Rodney attended the school’s Valentine’s dance, held in the cafeteria under the theme “Love Is a Kaleidoscope. ” When the band stopped playing around 11:30, the couple went out with friends, cruising Camp Bowie Boulevard and stopping for burgers and tacos.
After dropping their friends off, Rodney and Carla drove to the Brunswick Ridgely Bowl so she could use the restroom. It was past midnight in the quiet parking lot when the passenger door suddenly flew open. Rodney caught only a glimpse of the attacker—tall, with short brown hair and a vest—before the man struck him over the head with the butt of a pistol. During the struggle, a small metal piece, the gun’s magazine, fell onto the pavement.
McCurley grabbed Carla. As Rodney faded in and out of consciousness, he heard Carla say, “Rodney, go get my dad. ” She did not cry out for herself. Rodney blacked out and came to around 1 a.
m. , blood running into his eyes. Carla was gone. Rodney raced to the Walker home less than a mile away, driving over the curb onto the front lawn.
When Leighton Walker opened the door, Rodney shouted that Carla had been taken. Police found only two things in the parking lot: Carla’s purse and the gun magazine. Despite an extensive search, there were no witnesses and no note. On February 20, two officers searching a remote road near Benbrook Lake discovered Carla’s body inside a concrete culvert.
She had been strangled. The investigation was extensive. Detectives formed a task force, set up a 24-hour tip line, and pursued hundreds of leads. The small metal magazine was traced to a newer-model .
22 caliber Ruger handgun. Detectives obtained a list of local buyers from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms, and about two dozen names came back. One belonged to Glenn McCurley, a 31-year-old truck driver. He told detectives his Ruger had been stolen from his pickup truck weeks earlier while he was out fishing.
He said he never reported it because he had a prior record for stealing a car. He agreed to a polygraph test, which he passed, and the task force crossed him off the list. In 1977, another man, Jimmy Dean Sasser, confessed to Carla’s murder and was indicted, but he was released about seven months later after admitting he had lied. The case went quiet but never closed.
Carla’s father kept a metal box filled with notes, names, and maps related to the case. He died of a heart attack in 1987 without ever seeing the case solved. Jim Walker, Carla’s younger brother, tried to become a Fort Worth police detective but was disqualified due to a congenital eye condition. Still, he called the cold case unit every year, always receiving the same answer: nothing new.
For decades, McCurley lived quietly about a mile from the bowling alley. He was a truck driver, a church volunteer who mowed the lawn and made repairs, and a father of two sons. In 1988, his oldest son was killed by a drunk driver. The man accused of murdering Carla appeared to neighbors as just another dad on the block.
No one had reason to look at him again. The case took a turn in January 2018, when Jim Walker left another voicemail for the Fort Worth Cold Case Unit. Detective Leah Wagner returned the call, and Walker told her the family was running out of daylight. A reserve officer named Jeff Bennett began reading the old files and made a list of about 80 people to interview.
What investigators needed was DNA, but testing was expensive. Help came from an unexpected source: a retired postal clerk, Diane Quick, who had attended Western Hills High School and remembered Carla’s smile. She handed pamphlets about the case to true-crime figures at a convention, including retired investigator Paul Holes, who helped arrange funding for DNA testing. A lab in California built a full DNA profile from a small stain on Carla’s preserved clothing.
The profile did not match any convicted offender in the national database, and genealogy searches initially yielded nothing. Then a lab called Othram, near Houston, examined the last remaining evidence sample. On July 4, 2020, the lab’s CEO called Bennett with news: the DNA had been connected to a family tree with the last name McCurley. Bennett asked about Glenn McCurley Jr.
Investigators collected trash from the curb in front of McCurley’s home, and on September 4, 2020, the lab confirmed the DNA matched. On September 16, McCurley’s own DNA sample matched. He was arrested on September 21, 2020. At headquarters, he waived his right to a lawyer and initially denied knowing Carla, even after being shown her photograph.
After more than an hour, his voice dropped, and he asked who would take care of his wife. Then he said, “Okay. I did do it, I guess. ” He was booked on a charge of capital murder.
McCurley was indicted, and the trial began in August 2021. The prosecution built its case on three pillars: forensic genealogy, a three-hour confession, and a surprise discovery—a . 22 caliber Ruger pistol found hidden in McCurley’s home, the same kind of gun he had claimed was stolen in 1974. In the middle of the trial, McCurley signed a document confessing to the abduction and murder.
He pleaded guilty, and the judge sentenced him to life in prison without parole. At the sentencing, Carla’s sister, Cindy Stone, addressed McCurley directly. “I spent 17 years in the same bedroom with my sister. You had choices,” she said.
She asked whether he had hurt other people. Jim Walker also spoke, telling McCurley he had devastated another family. In a hallway after an earlier hearing, Jim Walker embraced McCurley’s son, Roddy, who sobbed an apology. “You are not responsible for the sins of your dad,” Jim told him.
McCurley later gave an interview from prison in which he denied harming Carla, contradicting his guilty plea. He was never charged in any other crime and died of natural causes on July 15, 2023, at age 80. Detectives had looked into other unsolved murders from the 1970s and 1980s to see if he was connected, but he was never charged. Carla Walker is remembered at Western Hills High School, where her classmates raised money for a plaque set into the floor of the front hallway.
Jim Walker plans to sell the family home and donate some of the proceeds to the Fort Worth Police Cold Case Support Group so other families do not have to wait 50 years for answers.