Gone Cold - Texas True Crime

On Thanksgiving night in 1985, Joe and Susan Blount were spending the holiday with their children, teenagers Angela and Robert, at their home in the Hilltop Mobile Home Park outside Fort Worth. Joining them for dinner were Joe’s brother, Ray, and Ray’s teenage son, Michael Columbus.

Later that evening, Ray left, Susan went to lie down, and Joe, Angela, Robert, and Michael drove to a nearby convenience store for ice cream and beer. While they were gone, someone knocked at the Blount’s door, but when Susan looked outside, she saw no one. When the others returned about twenty minutes later, they discovered a brown leather briefcase sitting on the top step outside the front door and took it inside.

At approximately 9:15 p.m., an explosion ripped through the mobile home, killing Joe Blount, Angela Blount, and Michael Columbus instantly. Robert was blown through the front door and was badly burned, while Susan escaped from the rear portion of the burning trailer unharmed, at least physically.

Investigators soon determined that the explosion was not an accident. Someone had constructed a bomb, concealed it inside the briefcase, and deliberately left it outside the Blount family’s home. But determining who left it there and who the bomb was actually intended to kill would prove far more difficult.

More than forty years later, the questions remain unanswered.

If you have any information about the murders of Robert and Angela Blount and Michael Columbus, please call the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives tipline at (888) 283-8477.

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In June 1974, seven-year-old Michael “Mickey” David Niles was asleep in his family’s Abilene home when an intruder entered. Mickey was stabbed once through the heart. His thirteen-year-old sister, Kelly, was stabbed eight times in the back but survived and managed to call for help. Their six-year-old brother Robbie slept through the attack.

Police found no obvious signs of forced entry and no motive. Detectives recovered blood and a latent fingerprint from inside the house, but neither led them to the killer. Kelly provided a description of the man who assaulted her and took the life of her brother, and the Abilene Police pursued leads across Texas and beyond, questioned numerous people, and considered whether Mickey’s murder could be connected to other baffling Abilene killings. Nothing produced an arrest, and the case eventually went cold.

In 1994, investigators entered the fingerprint into a database, but there was no immediate match. Ten years later, a DWI arrest in San Antonio finally connected the print to a suspect who had been stationed at Dyess Air Force Base at the time of Mickey’s murder. DNA testing also linked the man.

More than thirty years after Mickey’s death, the suspect pleaded guilty and received a forty-year prison sentence.

Whether he was responsible for any other Abilene murders remains unknown. If you have any information about the murder of Sharon Watts, Geneva Lucille Jackson, or the death of Juanita Carroll, please contact Abilene Crime Stoppers at (325) 676-8477.

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On April 24, 1977, 59-year-old Juanita Carroll was found dead inside the bathroom of her home on Ballinger Street in Abilene, Texas. Natural gas was flowing from a bathroom heater, and Juanita was seated in a chair, fully clothed, with her legs bound, her hands secured behind her back, and a cloth gag across her mouth.

From the beginning, the scene appeared to investigators to be a homicide. Justice of the Peace Silas Clark described what he saw as resembling an “execution,” while detectives searched Juanita’s home for fingerprints, fibers, hairs, and anything that might identify another person who had been inside. Her purse had been disturbed, an interior door from the garage had been left open, and yet there was no obvious robbery, clear evidence of a struggle, or apparent motive.

But as the autopsy progressed and detectives reconstructed Juanita’s final months, the investigation began moving in an unexpected direction. Medical findings, the unusual bindings, Juanita’s private life, and the absence of evidence clearly showing that another person had overpowered her forced investigators to reconsider what had initially seemed obvious.

Whatever happened inside Juanita’s house carried an unsettling familiarity. Ten years earlier, Sharon Kay Watts had been murdered in the bathroom of her Abilene apartment. In 1973, Geneva Jackson was beaten and left to drown in the bathtub of her home. Now a third woman had been found dead in a bathroom within the same small area of south and southwest Abilene. All three cases involved no signs of forced entry, no obvious robbery, and no clear motive.

What investigators ultimately decided happened to Juanita Carroll would only create more questions about the strange scene, and whether her death truly belonged alongside Abilene’s other unsolved bathroom slayings.

If you have any information about the murder of Juanita Carroll, please contact Abilene Crime Stoppers at (325) 676-8477.

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Six years after the unsolved murder of Sharon Kay Watts, Abilene was shaken by another brutal killing with unsettling similarities.

Geneva Lucille Jackson was a respected seventh-grade math teacher, Air Force widow, mother of three, and grandmother whose quiet life revolved around her students, church, and family. When she failed to appear for a routine beauty appointment just days before Christmas 1973, friends went to check on her and discovered a horrifying crime scene inside her Edgemont Drive home.

Investigators found Geneva had been savagely beaten, stabbed, and ultimately drowned in her bathtub. The house showed no signs of forced entry or robbery, suggesting she may have known the person who killed her. Detectives pursued every available lead, interviewed family, friends, neighbors, teachers, and students, administered multiple polygraph examinations, and sent physical evidence to the Texas Department of Public Safety Crime Lab. A mysterious wood splinter recovered from the scene briefly offered hope but ultimately led nowhere.

As the investigation stalled, police examined possible connections to the 1967 murder of Sharon Kay Watts. While both women were killed inside their homes and found in their bathrooms, investigators were never able to establish a direct link between the two cases.

Despite reward increases, tips spanning years, and periodic reviews of the investigation, Geneva Jackson's killer has never been identified. More than five decades later, her murder remains one of Abilene's oldest unsolved homicide cases.

If you have any information about the murder of Geneva Lucille Jackson, please contact Abilene Crime Stoppers at (325) 676-8477.

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In the Summer of 1967, Abilene, Texas, was a growing West Central Texas city where most residents believed violent crime happened somewhere else. Families left their doors unlocked, Dyess Air Force Base brought thousands of military personnel through the community, and investigators still relied on witness interviews and physical evidence rather than modern forensic technology. That sense of security was shattered when 24-year-old department store employee Sharon Kay Watts was found murdered inside the bathroom of her apartment.

After staying home from work because of an illness, Sharon was found dead on September 20, 1967, in a crime scene that immediately puzzled investigators. Her apartment showed no signs of forced entry or robbery, yet she had suffered extensive injuries.

As detectives searched for answers, the investigation was complicated by a mistake surrounding Sharon's autopsy. The resulting controversy limited what pathologists could determine, and left investigators with unanswered questions that would haunt the case forever. Detectives relied heavily on a partial palm print recovered from the bathtub, but in an era before DNA databases and computerized fingerprint systems, every comparison had to be made by hand.

Police interviewed coworkers, neighbors, friends, and numerous persons of interest, including a transient laborer and a man who falsely confessed to the crime. Later, investigators focused on former Dyess Air Force airman after his arrest in Louisiana for a violent crime. But no evidence ever placed him inside Sharon's apartment.

The case went cold, and Abilene moved forward, until another similar crime occurred several years later.

If you have any information about the murder of Sharon Kay Watts, please contact Abilene Crime Stoppers at (325) 676-8477.

You can support gone cold and listen to the show ad-free at patreon.com/gonecoldpodcast

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#JusticeForSharonWatts #Abilene #Texas #TX #TexasTrueCrime #ColdCase #TrueCrimePodcast #Podcast #Unsolved #MissingPerson #Missing #Disappeared #Disappearance #Vanished #Murder #UnsolvedMurder #UnsolvedMysteries #Homicide #CrimeStories #PodcastRecommendations #CrimeJunkie #MysteryPodcast

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