365 Days of Texas True Crime: Your Turn

Tawny the Rock Chick here, your resident true crime aficionado.  As interesting as I find true crime from all over to be, it’s the local stuff that I can really dig into.  You could say I’m a bit obsessed with researching stories of murder and missing persons from this area.  I’ve spent countless hours reading old newspapers articles, requesting files on cases and sifting through data cases online regarding homicide cases that you probably didn’t even know existed.  This area holds more sordid secrets than you may know and I’m going to tell you about all of them, one day at a time.  It’s 365 Days of Texas True Crime and today I’m reaching out to all of you…..

I’ve been telling the stories of Texas’s small town (and sometimes big towns) murders, mysteries and missing persons.  It’s one thing to reach into the archives of a town newspaper and read articles with second had accounts of something but it’s so much better to hear it from someone who was actually there.  I’m looking for anyone who has a story.  If you lived somewhere something happened, a murder, or missing person, maybe a bombing or a weird robbery, a scandal of any kind, whether you were involved or not.  Perhaps you were a friend of someone involved or the teacher of a kid who grew up to go missing or do something horrible, or maybe you just remember when it happened and can recall reading about it in the paper or seeing it on your local news.

I read through hundreds of archived news articles a day to find the stories I bring you, and I’m glad to do it, however not everything that happens in a town ends up in the paper.  In fact often times even something like a missing person or a murder will get very little coverage depending on the social or financial status of those involved if ya know what I mean.  Scandals involving the rich, powerful and connected are kept hush, hush with the right kind of money but the people who make a town run, the hard working, backbone of a community, the ones that aren’t rich, powerful or connected are always the ones that  know the real goings on in a town.  So like I said, not everything that happens in a town ends up in the paper, but I want to hear those stories too.

I’ll give you an example;

I have a friend who’s mom went to lunch with a kid who had just murdered a pregnant house wife….no more than an hour or so after he did it….with the money he stole from her. Yes, I’ll be doing a story on that very soon and it will come with an interview with my friends mom that I’ll include.

I realize many of these situations can be very sensitive, especially if you’ve had a loved one taken too soon, or someone who is missing that you’re still looking for, or perhaps you’re still looking for justice.  I’m glad to use the fact that people love to hear a good story to get the real message across about something.  Don’t think for a moment that me writing about these things are just for the spectacle of it, far from it.  Getting attention focused on something like a cold case or missing person can renew public interest and possibly lead to more information, tips and maybe even solving a case one day.  I write about anything I think might be interesting so that I can get as many people to read my series as possible. I may get them hooked with a story about a killer who got caught and is off the streets and serving time but stories like that could keep them around long enough to read about Kristy Lynne Booth, a young girl, who just graduated from high school, that went missing 40 years ago, and remains missing to this day.  Her sister still wants to know what happened to her. What if the person that got hooked on the stories that all have endings, reads a story that doesn’t have one, and realizes he or she might be the person to give it the ending we’ve been searching for.

I’m reaching out to people to tell me sordid stories from small or big towns but I don’t want anyone to think that my soul purpose is to exploit the pain that those stories caused people for entertainment alone.  I want things that were in the dark to come to light.  I want the unsolved to be solved, the guilty to face justice, the missing to be found and I don’t mind using the popularity of the true crime genre to do that, and you shouldn’t either.

So….now that the heavy stuff is out of the way, as I was saying…… Send me your stories, because in the words of the great Robert Stack..

Who knows, perhaps you too could solve a mystery…… (spooky music outro…you remember it, don’t act like it didn’t give you nightmares)

You can send your stories and information to me the following ways:

Private message on my Tawny Therockchick Facebook page-if we’re not friends yet…why aren’t we?

Email me at: heykiddocurios@outlook.com  (it’s the email address for the business I’m starting)

Or just leave a comment on the KBAT Facebook post that this blogs link was in, with your name and info and we will set something up.