Trace Evidence

In episode 200 of Trace Evidence we examine one of the most shocking, disturbing and haunting murders in Texas history -- The Shocking Murder of Betty Williams.
Odessa Texas, 1961. Seventeen year old Betty Williams goes missing from her bedroom sometime during the night. At first investigators don't believe there's any reason to worry, it's not uncommon for seventeen year old's to sneak out or run off for a few hours. As a matter of procedure, an investigator heads to Odessa High School to find out if anyone knew where Betty was.
They could have never imagined what happened next. John Mack Herring, a popular football player at the school, and Betty's ex-boyfriend, makes a shocking confession. He killed Betty the night before and hid her body beneath the muddy waters of a rural stock pond. When detectives ask why, Herring simply replies "Because she asked me to."
Herring explained that Betty had begged him to end her life, saying she was miserable and wanted to escape from this world. In Herring's own words, moments before firing the fatal shot, he asked for a kiss to remember her by, and Betty obliged. The media christened the crime "The Kiss and Kill Murder."
The town rallies behind the good looking and smart Mack Herring, a boy from the right side of the tracks from a good family while they demonize Betty, a harlot who seduced a tender teen into committing a hideous and violent act. Even in death, Betty Williams was blamed for the horrible crime committed against her.
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Thirty-nine year old Star Boomer was turning over a new leaf. In the midst of a divorce, she was studying to obtain her GED to put herself on the path to fulfilling her dream of opening her own business. She wanted, more than anything, to be able to provide a good and happy life for her young son, but a casual stop at a local bar would turn deadly.
On the afternoon of February 23rd, 1999, Star walked into Uncle Mike's, a local dive bar in Kansas City, Kansas. Observing an argument between an apparent couple, Star stepped in to protect the woman. Moments later, she was assaulted by the man's friend before he hustled out the back door.
Sometime later, Star's attacker returned and in full view of more than a dozen witnesses, Star was beaten unconscious before being dragged out to a waiting car. She was never seen alive again. Based on witness testimony, two men were charged with second degree murder but the charges would be dropped when not one of the witnesses was willing to testify as to who attacked Star nor what they did with her afterwards.
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Sandra Prince was well known throughout Florida's Bay Avenue for her dedication to the community, her craft real estate acquisitions and for being one of the nicest and kindest friends and neighbors you could ever want. For much of Sandra's life, things had gone just the way she'd wanted them to until the night she vanished.
For months investigators struggled to gain a foothold on Sandra's life. Notoriously private, few people knew exactly what she was up to nor who she spent time with. Eventually, one name came to the surface: Earl Pippin. Pippin worked as a contractor for Sandra and, reportedly, had been in a relationship with her for close to five years.
Nine long months after her disappearance, the Temple Terrace Police officially named Pippin as a person of interest in the case. The hunt for Sandra's remains began in earnest as detectives had few reasons to believe the missing woman might still be alive. Pippin, allegedly the sole beneficiary to her estate, valued at nearly $3 million, quickly became the central focus of their investigation.
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In late December of 2005, fifty-nine year old Sandra Prince went missing from Temple Terrace, Florida. For several days, friends and neighbors assumed she had gone out of town to celebrate the New Year but when January rolled around and Sandra didn't appear, they grew concerned.
Detectives working the case noted that they hadn't found any signs of a struggle, nor indications of forced entry at her home but the cell phone she always carried was left behind while her purse was missing. A notoriously private woman, investigators struggled to learn more about her as they tried to find anyone in her life who may have stood to gain from her disappearance. They had no way of knowing that a secret romance might be the key to discovering what truly happened.
Breaking News After fifteen long years, an arrest has been made in the brutal 2007 slaying of eighteen year old Minot State University student Anita Knutson whose case was profiled in episode 137. In this episode we'll go through all of the details currently available and, as more information is released, a full length update episode will come out at a later date.
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Charles and Catherine Romer had spent their winter in Florida, but were preparing to head home to New York. For the next few days they planned to cover 1,400 miles in four days. It was a trip they'd made dozens of times before but this time would be different. Just one day in and they would mysteriously vanish.
After checking into a hotel room in Brunswick, Georgia, the couple seemingly disappeared along with their car, a customized 1979 Lincoln Continental. By the time anyone realized something was wrong no one had seen or heard from the Romers for four days. Investigators were starting with a major disadvantage, and it was going to get worse.
Despite launching the largest search in the history of southern Georgia not a single trace of the couple could be found. They had vanished along with their car and thousands of dollars in fine jewelry. Detectives and the family theorized they'd been the victims of a robbery gone wrong, a random crime or perhaps one executed by someone they knew. For others, however, the answers may lie somewhere beneath any number of bodies of water between Florida and New York.
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Music Courtesy of: "Lost Time" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
Sources: https://www.trace-evidence.com/romers
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