FORT WORTH, TEXAS: Carla Walker's sexual assault and murder case created a state of perpetual fear in not only the town of Fort Worth but large areas of Texas. A brutal case that remained unsolved for more than four decades, Walker's death continues to shock and pain the citizens of the state.
Her killing, while mysterious for the longest time, opened up many other cases of rape, torture, and murder that had gone without any justice served to the victims. It all came down to a man named Glen McCurley who is remembered as a serial killer in the town of Fort Worth, especially for killing the 17-year-old Walker. NBC's true crime show 'Dateline' will be doing a rerun of the investigation that led to the 1974 murder case's closure only a few years ago.
Who is Glen McCurly?
Walker's murder was not the first crime on McCurly's record. Ever since he was young, he was involved in petty crimes and was accused of stealing cars multiple times. After setting up a family of a wife and two children, he first moved to Fort Worth back in 1972 and worked as a truck driver. The townspeople reportedly thought of him as a decent man who was not in the least bit suspicious.
He first became a suspect in Walker's case when the .22 gun magazine found in her boyfriend's car where the two were attacked on the night of her abduction was traced back to McCurly. McCurly responded to the charges by saying that his gun had been stolen for quite some time. Investigators dismissed him as a suspect as he readily took the polygraph test for his statement and had passed it too.
Crime uncovered 47 years later
Walker's case was reopened in 2019 and further investigated through DNA samples that were not looked into because of lack of technology back in the 70s. It did not take long for investigators to connect the dots and McCurly become a suspect again; he was 77 years old and suffering from cancer at the time, according to an extended report by Texas Monthly. Long after he continued to deny murdering her, he confessed to his crime to the investigators on the case. He shared that he tried to save Walker from her boyfriend and after he took her away, they had sex which Walker had consented to. At one point he mentioned that he tried choking her to death but never ended up doing it.
The detectives were unconvinced by McCurly's retelling of the crime because of the way he had worded his statements. In previous investigations, other murders from and around Forth Worth had striking similarities to Walker's. It did appear that McCurly was confused between two or more incidents but no evidence could provide a lead on the other murders that had come up during the investigation.
Later, during the court proceedings on Walker's case, McCurly's confession was presented in the court, and in the middle of one of the proceedings, quite early on, he pleaded guilty after a brief conversation with his lawyer. He received a life sentence and is currently imprisoned at Gib Lewis Unit. He stated pressure from authorities as his reason for the confession and continues to deny that he did anything wrong to Walker.
