Speaker 1: School of Humans.
Speaker 2: Helen Got Murder Line actively investigates cold case murders in
Speaker 2: an effort to raise public awareness invite witnesses to come
Speaker 2: forward and present evidence that could potentially be further investigated
Speaker 2: by law enforcement. While we value insights from family and
Speaker 2: community members, their statements should not be considered evidence and
Speaker 2: point to the challenges of verifying facts inherent in cold cases.
Speaker 2: We remind listeners that everyone is presumed innocent until proven
Speaker 2: guilty in a court of law. Nothing in the podcast
Speaker 2: is intended to state or imply that anyone who has
Speaker 2: not been convicted of a crime is guilty of any wrongdoing.
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening.
Speaker 3: In the early morning hours of July fourth, two thousand
Speaker 3: and two, four year old Danaria Finley was sleeping in
Speaker 3: her bedroom at home at ten sixteen fourth Street in Orange, Texas.
Speaker 3: Orange is the easternmost city in Texas and its right
Speaker 3: across the border from Louisiana on the Sabine River. It
Speaker 3: feels like a small town. The population is only about
Speaker 3: nineteen thousand. Denaria lived with her mother, twenty six year
Speaker 3: old Jamie Arnold, and her two sisters for the July
Speaker 3: fourth holiday. Three of their young cousins were staying over
Speaker 3: with them. Denaria's father, thirty year old Johnny Edwards, lived
Speaker 3: in Sparks, Louisiana, which was about a two and a
Speaker 3: half hour drive away down the Iten Freeway. He had
Speaker 3: been planning to see his daughter on July fourth. They
Speaker 3: were planning to shoot all fireworks. Jamie came home from
Speaker 3: work that night and put the kids to bed at
Speaker 3: around one thirty am. She told police that she checked
Speaker 3: on the children at around three or four AM. When
Speaker 3: she checked on the children, everything seemed fine. At some point,
Speaker 3: Jamie went to sleep and then she woke up the
Speaker 3: next morning at around ten am. Denariu's sisters and cousins
Speaker 3: were playing at home. Denaria was gone. I'm Catherine Townsend.
Speaker 3: Over the past seven years of making my true crime podcast,
Speaker 3: Helen Gone, I've learned that there is no such thing
Speaker 3: as a small town where murder never happens. I have
Speaker 3: received hundreds of messages from people all around the country
Speaker 3: asking for help with an unsolved murder that's affected them,
Speaker 3: their families, and their communities. If you have a case
Speaker 3: you'd like me and my team to look into, you
Speaker 3: can reach out to us at our Helen Gone Murder
Speaker 3: Line at six seven eight seven four four six one
Speaker 3: four five. That's six seven eight seven four four six
Speaker 3: one four five, or you can send us a message
Speaker 3: on Instagram at Helen Gone Pod this is Helen Gone
Speaker 3: Murder Line. Jamie later told law enforcement that when she
Speaker 3: saw Denaria was gone, she walked around the neighborhood to
Speaker 3: look for her. Then she called friends and relatives to
Speaker 3: check that Denaria wasn't with any of them, and she wasn't,
Speaker 3: so Jamie called the police to report Denaria missing. That afternoon,
Speaker 3: Orange Texas law enforcement came to the home to start
Speaker 3: their search. They wondered how a little girl who was
Speaker 3: just weeks away from her fifth birthday could go missing
Speaker 3: in the middle of the night with no one noticing.
Speaker 3: Denaria had been sharing a bedroom with five other children,
Speaker 3: and while the case is still officially active, so we
Speaker 3: have not seen the case file, police have given several
Speaker 3: interviews to the media over the years, and from their descriptions,
Speaker 3: it doesn't sound like any of the children saw anyone
Speaker 3: they didn't recognize come into the room. Denaria just disappeared.
Speaker 3: So was Danaria kidnapped? And if so, how could someone
Speaker 3: get into her room? There was a comment on an
Speaker 3: online forum about this case, and it talked about the
Speaker 3: fact that officers had looked for a potential point of
Speaker 3: entry for the kidnapper and saw that there was a
Speaker 3: broken window in Danaria's room. This person went on to
Speaker 3: say they had heard that the window's broken part was
Speaker 3: papered over with cardboard, so it looked like.
Speaker 1: It was taped up and had not been moved.
Speaker 3: Apparently, law enforcement did not believe that that window was
Speaker 3: the way that someone accessed the room. We're not sure
Speaker 3: if this is true. The comment claimed to have been
Speaker 3: from a news source, but we can't find the original
Speaker 3: newspaper article. But either way, at least from what's been
Speaker 3: made public, it doesn't seem as though any of the
Speaker 3: her children noticed anyone in that bedroom. There was never
Speaker 3: a description given of a suspect, but maybe the kidnapper
Speaker 3: never entered Deenaria's room and instead she woke up in
Speaker 3: the night and wandered around the house. There was also
Speaker 3: no sign of forced entry into the home, but the
Speaker 3: door was unlocked.
Speaker 1: Jamie told police she left.
Speaker 3: The door unlocked often because her mother, who lived nearby,
Speaker 3: would sometimes stop by the house without calling first. That way,
Speaker 3: her mom could just walk in. Another possibility was that
Speaker 3: Denaria might have woken up before anyone else in the
Speaker 3: home and went outside and that is where she was taken.
Speaker 3: According to her missing poster, the last time Danaria was seen,
Speaker 3: she had her hair and braids and was last seen
Speaker 3: wearing a white shirt with a flower on it and
Speaker 3: purple shorts. Jamie also said that her daughter was last
Speaker 3: seen barefoot. Denaria was four feet tall and weighed ninety pounds.
Speaker 3: Police launched a search for Denaria and the story was
Speaker 3: all over local news. The entire community became involved in
Speaker 3: this search. The Red Cross showed up and set up
Speaker 3: a command post in a local church parking lot. The
Speaker 3: search eventually spanned the three miles around Danaria's family home.
Speaker 3: They had canine units, helicopters, and around two hundred volunteers.
Speaker 3: Denaria's father, Johnny Edwards, also joined in the search. Police
Speaker 3: of course talked to him and pretty much immediately ruled
Speaker 3: him out. He seemed to be very cooperative, and when
Speaker 3: he heard a reward fund was being started, he offered
Speaker 3: to add the value of his car to that reward fund.
Speaker 3: Local newspaper, The Beaumont Enterprise interviewed Johnny Edwards. He told
Speaker 3: the reporter that Denaria going missing and the weight to
Speaker 3: get her back was agony, just pure agony. He also
Speaker 3: addressed the kidnapper directly. He said, quote, if someone is
Speaker 3: out there and they have her and they're scared to
Speaker 3: bring her back because of the amount of law enforcement involved,
Speaker 3: they could bring her to a Walmart or McDonald's. We
Speaker 3: don't care. We just want her back. The entire town
Speaker 3: came together to search for the missing child, and the
Speaker 3: circumstances struck terror into the hearts of the parents in town.
Speaker 3: According to media reports, some people helping with the search
Speaker 3: were able to hold on to hope because another young
Speaker 3: woman had gone missing shortly before in the same general area,
Speaker 3: and that missing young woman was found alive after sixteen days.
Speaker 3: The head of Texas Equisearch, who helped in the search
Speaker 3: for Deenaria, told KPLCTV. He acknowledged that the chances of
Speaker 3: getting Denaria back alive dropped significantly after forty eight hours,
Speaker 3: but he said that there were some exceptions, like the
Speaker 3: young woman who was being held and found alive, so
Speaker 3: the family continued to hope. Danaria love to wear pink
Speaker 3: ribbons in her hair, so someone made pink ribbons with
Speaker 3: Denaria's initials on them. Volunteers wore them during the search.
Speaker 3: Johnny Edward's mother, Wanda, was also there. During the search.
Speaker 1: She told a reporter she had not lost hope.
Speaker 3: She believed that her granddaughter was somewhere alive out there,
Speaker 3: but the searchers found no trace of Dunaria. Then, on
Speaker 3: Monday morning, at eleven am, four days after Denaria had
Speaker 3: gone missing, law enforcement called off the search, and Denaria's
Speaker 3: friends and family feared the worst. Earlier that day, shortly
Speaker 3: after eight am, on July eighth, two thousand and two,
Speaker 3: a pipeline worker was on Pleasure Island in Port Arthur
Speaker 3: and found the remains of a little girl. Words spread
Speaker 3: that a body had been found. For several agonizing hours,
Speaker 3: Denari's family did not know whether it was her or not.
Speaker 3: DNA testing later revealed a match it was Denaria. On
Speaker 3: July eighth, two thousand and two, after Danaria Finley had
Speaker 3: been missing for four days, a pipeline inspector at a
Speaker 3: work site found her body about twenty seven miles from
Speaker 3: her home in Orange. The worker told local media he
Speaker 3: was walking down a narrow path when he saw a
Speaker 3: badly decomposed body wrapped in a floral sheet. The worker
Speaker 3: said that the body was dumped in such a way
Speaker 3: that quote dredging crews would finish covering her with clay
Speaker 3: deposits end quote. The police department issued a news release
Speaker 3: in which they stated that quote, Her mostly nude and
Speaker 3: partially decomposed body was found approximately twenty seven miles away
Speaker 3: near a dredge pipeline ditch off State Highway eighty two
Speaker 3: in Port Arthur, an area known as Pleasure Island end quote.
Speaker 3: At the autopsy, the medical examiners were unable to identify
Speaker 3: an exact cause of death because of the decomposition. The
Speaker 3: body had been outside for four days in Texas summer heat,
Speaker 3: in an area where there was also wildlife like alligators.
Speaker 3: Newspaper reports stated that Denaria's remains had been ravaged by wildlife,
Speaker 3: though they didn't give specifics. They did mention the fact
Speaker 3: that an alligator was euthanized, though it's not clear if
Speaker 3: the alligator had anything to do with the remains or
Speaker 3: just happened to be nearby. But forensic testing did reveal
Speaker 3: that Danaria had been strangled and that she had been
Speaker 3: sexually assaulted. The police in Orange, Texas, and the community
Speaker 3: were left with a lot of questions. Why would the
Speaker 3: killer take Danaria there to that spot? Is it possible
Speaker 3: that the killer or killers knew the area and knew
Speaker 3: that crews were going to cover that ground? Could the
Speaker 3: location of the body dump provide any clues as to
Speaker 3: the possible identity of Naria's killer? And one of the
Speaker 3: biggest and to my mind, most obvious questions of the case.
Speaker 3: Was Denaria taken by a random stranger who saw an
Speaker 3: opportunity or was it someone who knew her and planned this.
Speaker 1: Many of the media.
Speaker 3: Reports quote police sources who say that they believe the
Speaker 3: kidnapper was someone known to Dnaria. In an Associated Press article,
Speaker 3: Major Steve Jones of the Orange Police Department says that
Speaker 3: Denaria's case quote did not appear to be a stranger
Speaker 3: abduction end quote. I wanted to take a step back
Speaker 3: to talk about some statistics around kidnapping, because child abduction
Speaker 3: is shockingly common in the United States. In fact, according
Speaker 3: to the Child Crime Prevention and Safety Center, a child
Speaker 3: goes missing or is abducted about every forty seconds. According
Speaker 3: to the Orange County District Attorney's Office, approximately eight hundred
Speaker 3: and forty thousand people are reported missing each year, and
Speaker 3: the FBIS tomates that between eighty five and ninety percent
Speaker 3: of these are children. About half of all of these
Speaker 3: abductions involved family kidnapping, parental kidnapping, or parents involved in
Speaker 3: custody disputes, and in family kidnappings, a much higher percentage
Speaker 3: of those are committed by females, and most of these
Speaker 3: children are found within.
Speaker 1: A few hours.
Speaker 3: Obviously, though, any time that a child goes missing under
Speaker 3: suspicious circumstances, everyone in the household has to be evaluated
Speaker 3: thoroughly by law enforcement. As I said, the police did
Speaker 3: look into Danaria's father, Johnny Edwards. Again, her parents were
Speaker 3: not together, but it seems as though just reading through
Speaker 3: all this information that they did have an amicable relationship.
Speaker 3: Johnny was cooperative and had an alibi. He was in
Speaker 3: his hometown of Stark's, Louisiana when Danaria was taken. When
Speaker 3: it comes to kidnapping statistics, there's another category called non
Speaker 3: family abductions. This category includes kidnappings committed by a quaint
Speaker 3: and strangers. Acquaintance abductions make up twenty seven percent of
Speaker 3: all child abductions. The kidnappers are often juveniles end quote.
Speaker 3: This type of abduction has the highest number of female
Speaker 3: and teenage victims and is often associated with other crimes
Speaker 3: such as sexual and physical assault end quote. Then they
Speaker 3: are the straight stranger abductions, where the kidnapper is completely
Speaker 3: unknown to the victim. These are the ones that get
Speaker 3: the most media attention, but actually they're the rarest kind.
Speaker 3: According to Reuter's from an article in twenty nineteen, there
Speaker 3: had only been about three hundred to three hundred and
Speaker 3: fifty stranger abductions per year between twenty ten and twenty seventeen.
Speaker 3: That equals much less than one percent of abductions. But
Speaker 3: stranger abductions are also some of the most dangerous. Experts
Speaker 3: say that stranger kidnappings very often result in the victim's
Speaker 3: death within a short period of time. Three other interesting
Speaker 3: things that I didn't know about stranger kidnappings. They are
Speaker 3: much more likely to occur in the outdoors. Two when
Speaker 3: strangers kidnap, they use firearms more often than in other kidnappings.
Speaker 3: And three these type of kidnappings often result in robbing
Speaker 3: male victims and sexual assault in female victims. We don't
Speaker 3: know for sure that Danaria was taken from inside her house. Yes,
Speaker 3: the door was unlocked and Danaria's mom and the other
Speaker 3: kids were asleep, But maybe she could have wandered outside
Speaker 3: on her own and a stranger kidnapped her from her yard.
Speaker 3: People do get kidnapped from random strangers, and it only
Speaker 3: takes a second. On November thirtieth, twenty twenty two, seven
Speaker 3: year old Athena Strand disappeared from her family driveway near
Speaker 3: Fort Worth, Texas, in a town called Paradise, in broad daylight.
Speaker 3: Police caught the killer three days later. He was a
Speaker 3: FedEx driver named Tanner Horner who had been delivering Christmas presents.
Speaker 3: He claimed that he accidentally hit Athena with his deliver
Speaker 3: truck and then pulled her into the vehicle and kidnapped
Speaker 3: her and later strangled her because he was afraid that
Speaker 3: she would tell her parents about the accident. Athena's body
Speaker 3: was found three days after she disappeared in the Trinity River, about.
Speaker 1: Nine miles from her home.
Speaker 3: Police stated they believed that Athena was taken just two
Speaker 3: hundred yards from her front door and was killed within
Speaker 3: an hour from the time she was put into her kidnappers' vehicle.
Speaker 3: This is very sadly the pattern with these types of cases.
Speaker 3: Very often the child who is abducted by a stranger
Speaker 3: is killed within hours of their abduction. Tanner Lynn Horner
Speaker 3: was charged with capital murder and aggravated kidnapping. He is
Speaker 3: currently awaiting trial, which as of now is set for
Speaker 3: twenty twenty six, and is pleaded not guilty.
Speaker 1: If convicted, he faces the death penalty.
Speaker 3: Athena's mother, Maitland Gandy, has advocated for a new bill
Speaker 3: named after Athena that attempts to change Texas law so
Speaker 3: that amber alerts do not have any delay from the
Speaker 3: time that the child disappears to the time in which
Speaker 3: the alert can be issued locally. This might help in
Speaker 3: cases like Denarius. Having a tool that could instantly notify
Speaker 3: the local community could be a massive help in these
Speaker 3: types of cases, but Denari's case did not get much
Speaker 3: media attention. There were a few local reports about Danaria's murder,
Speaker 3: but there were no national headlines. Some people have stated
Speaker 3: over the years that they believed that because she was black,
Speaker 3: her case did not receive as much attention as cases
Speaker 3: of missing children who are white. Denaria's funeral took place
Speaker 3: at the Mountain Zion Baptist Church. The pastor told local
Speaker 3: press the funeral was so crowded they had to bring
Speaker 3: in a closed circuit TV. She was buried near her
Speaker 3: home in the Magnolia Memorial Garden in Orange. Years later,
Speaker 3: the minister of that church, C. W. Crawford, was interviewed
Speaker 3: by reporter. He said that Denaria's death had left the
Speaker 3: lasting impression on the community. He said everybody in that
Speaker 3: community still thought about her.
Speaker 1: Every Fourth of July, he said, quote.
Speaker 3: People who didn't really know Danaria were crying and shedding tears.
Speaker 3: She was one four year old kid that brought this
Speaker 3: whole community together. Detectives canvassed the area. They questioned a
Speaker 3: lot of people, including a sex offender who lived nearby.
Speaker 3: They reportedly searched his home and his truck, but they
Speaker 3: found no obvious suspects.
Speaker 1: It was also reported that law enforcement did.
Speaker 3: Do standard checks and made their way through questioning all
Speaker 3: the known sex offenders in the area, but again came
Speaker 3: up with nothing. In the early stages of the investigation,
Speaker 3: a lot of people focused on what was going on
Speaker 3: inside the home and on Danaria's mother, Jamie Arnold, because
Speaker 3: there was a lot that was not known, or if
Speaker 3: it was known, it was made public, like who was
Speaker 3: watching Denari and the other children that night while her
Speaker 3: mom worked, what other family lived in the area, who
Speaker 3: the neighbors were. On August twenty third, two thousand and two,
Speaker 3: The Orange Leader reported that the FBI showed up at
Speaker 3: Denaria's family home and took some items from the house,
Speaker 3: including a Teddy Bear. Police questioned Jamie, and it was
Speaker 3: reported at the time there was an open CPS investigation
Speaker 3: against her before Denaria disappeared.
Speaker 1: We looked through court records.
Speaker 3: And found online references to those cases cases in which
Speaker 3: Jamie was being investigated for neglectful supervision. A local newspaper
Speaker 3: spoke to someone from CPS who confirmed that there was
Speaker 3: an active investigation into Jamie at the time of Denaria's death,
Speaker 3: and that another case was opened after her death. However,
Speaker 3: one case was dismissed in December of two thousand and four,
Speaker 3: and it appears the rest were also dismissed.
Speaker 1: At some point. It was reported that Jamie had admitted.
Speaker 3: To CPS she had used some drugs at some point
Speaker 3: in the past, but she claimed that at the time
Speaker 3: when Danaria disappeared, she was not using drugs, and obviously
Speaker 3: neither drug use nor CPS allegations, even if they are
Speaker 3: found to be valid, which these were not, do not
Speaker 3: indicate that this mother had any role in her daughter's disappearance.
Speaker 3: In late July two thousand and three, Jamie spoke to
Speaker 3: a local news station KPLC about the rumors that she
Speaker 3: said were going around the community, rumors.
Speaker 1: That she said had hurt her. She said that she.
Speaker 3: Had been hearing criticisms of her parenting since Denaria's murder.
Speaker 3: A year after denarius murder, Jamie said that her two
Speaker 3: other daughters, who were seven and nine years old at
Speaker 3: that time, had been taken into foster care. She told
Speaker 3: a reporter that because of what she called the terrible
Speaker 3: things people had told officials after denarius murder, she was
Speaker 3: terrified that she might lose custody of her other two children,
Speaker 3: and in that interview, she said people were suspicions of
Speaker 3: her because of that three hours between Denaria going missing
Speaker 3: and her reporting it to the police. She reiterated the
Speaker 3: delay was because she was looking around the neighborhood for Denaria,
Speaker 3: thinking Denaria might be with a friend or relative. Jamie
Speaker 3: said that she believes people would be suspicious of her
Speaker 3: unless and until either the murder was solved or police
Speaker 3: officially cleared her as a suspect, which she said had
Speaker 3: not happened. Detectives collected evidence, including DNA from Danaria's clothes,
Speaker 3: and reportedly they took DNA and hair samples from potential
Speaker 3: people of interest, but since this is still an open investigation,
Speaker 3: they've made references over the years to DNA, but they
Speaker 3: haven't specified exactly what they were testing or what the
Speaker 3: results were. In February of two thousand and four, there
Speaker 3: appeared to be a break in the case when Orange
Speaker 3: Police Chief Sam Cattrell stated at a press conference, quote,
Speaker 3: we believe we know who did it. In February of
Speaker 3: two thousand and four, the Orange Police Chief Sam Catroll,
Speaker 3: indicated that the police department had figured out who killed
Speaker 3: Denaria Fenley. At the time, local media reported that quote.
Speaker 3: Police sources stated that evidence and herefogical charts from the
Speaker 3: police department indicate a possible suspect lived or had been
Speaker 3: staying within a few miles from denarius Fourth Street home
Speaker 3: at the time of the crime.
Speaker 1: End quote.
Speaker 3: But then there was no other public announcement. No suspect
Speaker 3: was identified no one was arrested or charged. It was
Speaker 3: reported that the case was sent to the Orange County
Speaker 3: District Attorney's office, but then nothing happened. One newspaper article
Speaker 3: quoted a police source who said that the killer was
Speaker 3: unsophisticated and made a lot of mistakes, but that he
Speaker 3: had a lot of help from the environment. I believe
Speaker 3: he was referring to the fact that the decomposition made
Speaker 3: the forensic testing challenging. Little evidence could be recovered from
Speaker 3: her body. Months and then years went by. In twenty fourteen,
Speaker 3: according to media reports, the police in Orange resubmitted some
Speaker 3: DNA to the FBI, but they received no matches. Mark
Speaker 3: Blynton was the assistant chief of the Orange Police Department
Speaker 3: at the time. He talked to a local newspaper on
Speaker 3: the twentieth anniversary of the case in twenty twenty two.
Speaker 3: At that time, he said he still believed that the
Speaker 3: case was solvable. Another detective from the Orange Police Department,
Speaker 3: Nick Medeena, was also quoted. He said that police were
Speaker 3: quote waiting on new technology or new investigative measures that
Speaker 3: may assist in the investigation, which in my opinion.
Speaker 1: Is pretty vague. So what did the police have.
Speaker 3: In evidence and is there anything that can be done
Speaker 3: to to retest evidence including Denario's clothing. Police have said
Speaker 3: they do have some evidence, including some DNA and some
Speaker 3: fiber samples. There is also the sheet, the one that
Speaker 3: Denario was found wrapped in. It was made by Spring
Speaker 3: Made and presumably did not come out of her home.
Speaker 3: The sheet is a flower pattern that is pink, yellow,
Speaker 3: and white.
Speaker 1: It looks like a million other sheets out there.
Speaker 3: Police followed up leads on that sheet to see if
Speaker 3: they could narrow down who might have purchased it, but
Speaker 3: unfortunately the pattern had been made by Spring Maids several
Speaker 3: years earlier. There were a lot of those sheets sold,
Speaker 3: so there was no way to track it down. The
Speaker 3: sheet was also decayed when it was found. Police released
Speaker 3: details publicly on the sheet, including a photo. We're going
Speaker 3: to be posting photos of that sheet and of Denaria's
Speaker 3: clothing on Instagram at helen gonpod. Over the years, police
Speaker 3: have released some other information publicly. They have confirmed to
Speaker 3: Daria was sexually assaulted by male abductor. They've compared hair
Speaker 3: follicles and DNA on area sex offenders to their evidence,
Speaker 3: but they've gotten no matches. Police have hinted at having
Speaker 3: other DNA evidence, but they haven't specifically said what that
Speaker 3: evidence might be. We do know they took a look
Speaker 3: at a garbage can in the home and removed the
Speaker 3: entire can, and other than that, there have.
Speaker 1: Not been many public details.
Speaker 3: We have not received responses to our foyer request yet,
Speaker 3: but honestly, I'm expecting it to be denied because this
Speaker 3: is still technically an open investigation. A local news station
Speaker 3: quoted Captain Robert Enman from the Orange Police Department. He
Speaker 3: was the patrol captain on duty when Denaria's missing person's
Speaker 3: call came in. He said, quote, this investigation has never
Speaker 3: been closed end quote. He made a couple of comments
Speaker 3: about DNA too. He said over the years, police had
Speaker 3: sent out DNA from Dannaria's crime scene to private lab
Speaker 3: as well as presumably.
Speaker 1: The FBI labs.
Speaker 3: He also said he hoped the DNA could someday be
Speaker 3: extracted from the bed sheet that Denaria's body was found
Speaker 3: wrapped in. He said he hoped the DNA would help
Speaker 3: them narrow down potential people of interests, and he also
Speaker 3: specifically said that the Orange Police Department would be interviewing
Speaker 3: new people in the next couple months, but that was
Speaker 3: back in twenty twenty one, and four years later, there
Speaker 3: have been no significant updates. So what needs to happen
Speaker 3: next and is there anything we can learn from other
Speaker 3: homicide cases that have been solved in the same region,
Speaker 3: Because there are other cold cases that DNA advances have helped.
Speaker 3: Some have been solved years or even decades later. On
Speaker 3: October fifth, nineteen eighty eight, thirty six year old Patricia
Speaker 3: and Jacobs, a married mother of three, went out for
Speaker 3: a night at the Silver Spur nightclub, but she never
Speaker 3: came home, and her husband, to whom she was seemingly
Speaker 3: happily married, reported her missing to the Harden County Sheriff's Office.
Speaker 3: The next day, Patricia's body was found in the Netchez
Speaker 3: River under the Rainbow Bridge in Port Arthur. A month later,
Speaker 3: other items were found under a bridge, including Patricia's driver's license.
Speaker 3: Patricia's autopsy revealed that her cause of death was drowning,
Speaker 3: but before she drowned, someone had inflicted trauma to her
Speaker 3: head and face. The manner of death was ruled a homicide.
Speaker 3: Over the years, the Harden County Sheriff's Office and the
Speaker 3: Port Arthur Police Department and the Texas Rangers all joined
Speaker 3: in the investigation, and eventually they found a suspect. His
Speaker 3: name was Daniel McGinnis and he was twenty nine years
Speaker 3: old at the time of the murder. In October of
Speaker 3: twenty eighteen, one of Patricia's family members contacted the Texas Rangers.
Speaker 3: They wanted an update, and the Texas Rangers and the
Speaker 3: Port Arthur Police Department at that time resubmitted some of
Speaker 3: Patricia's clothing from modern DNA testing, testing that they said
Speaker 3: was not available at the time of the murder. The
Speaker 3: items were entered into cotis and they found a match.
Speaker 3: The DNA on Patricia's clothing from the crime scene was
Speaker 3: a match to the suspect, Daniel McGinnis. On August twenty seventh,
Speaker 3: twenty nineteen, Daniel McGinnis was arrested and charged with Patricia's murder.
Speaker 3: In twenty twenty two, he was convicted and given a
Speaker 3: twenty year sentence. Daniel was also given a one hundred
Speaker 3: and ninety nine year sentence on unrelated drugs and weapons charges.
Speaker 3: This never would have happened if a family member had
Speaker 3: not reached out and asked that the case be reopened
Speaker 3: and if police had not taken another look at the
Speaker 3: cold case. One of the most terrifying things about this
Speaker 3: case is that, according to a twenty twenty two media report,
Speaker 3: police suspected Daniel after they believed he was involved in
Speaker 3: assault against two other women, but apparently they couldn't get
Speaker 3: enough evidence to convict him. Besides, DNA, could the location
Speaker 3: where Denari's body was dumped provide a clue. Mark Blanton,
Speaker 3: the assistant police chief in Port Arthur in two thousand
Speaker 3: and two, told a news station that there was not
Speaker 3: much DNA left at the actual crime scene. He also
Speaker 3: mentioned the fact that a nearby alligator was euthanized. That
Speaker 3: had me wondering if someone chose that spot because of
Speaker 3: its proximity to wildlife or to alligators, or maybe it
Speaker 3: was someone who had knowledge of the construction work going
Speaker 3: on there and thought that her body would be covered
Speaker 3: by the ongoing work. Police have said that they believe
Speaker 3: that there was more than one person involved in the abduction.
Speaker 3: They made comments over the years about them believing that
Speaker 3: the killer told someone else about it or possibly had
Speaker 3: a guilty conscience. Brandon Bess, a Texas Ranger investigator, was
Speaker 3: quoted as saying, quote, they did not keep this a
Speaker 3: total secret.
Speaker 1: We believe multiple people at least.
Speaker 3: Know about this, and that there's somebody out there who
Speaker 3: can bring us that little piece of information, and that
Speaker 3: you know, they may not think it's important, but it is.
Speaker 3: Danaria's mother and the rest of her family continued to
Speaker 3: hope for answers and for justice. The city of Orange
Speaker 3: saw some hard times over the years. The city was
Speaker 3: heavily damaged by Hurricane Ike, which hit in September of
Speaker 3: two thousand and eight.
Speaker 1: Three people were killed in.
Speaker 3: That storm, and then the town got hit again in
Speaker 3: August of twenty seventeen when Hurricane Harvey ravaged the community.
Speaker 3: Deanaria's home in the one thousand block of Fourth Street,
Speaker 3: where Danaria lived with her mother and sisters, was destroyed
Speaker 3: by Hurricane Rita in two thousand and five, and the
Speaker 3: entire block was torn down in twenty twenty two. Several
Speaker 3: local newspapers did follow up stories about the case. There
Speaker 3: was already a three thousand dollars reward on the Texas
Speaker 3: Rangers Cold Case website, and the Texas Department of Public
Speaker 3: Safety increased the reward for any information on Danaria's murder
Speaker 3: to six thousand dollars, but so far there have been
Speaker 3: no significant tips. The Orange Chief of Police, Sam Cattrell,
Speaker 3: after he retired, told a local news station that the
Speaker 3: memory of Danaria's homicide and sexual assault had always stayed
Speaker 3: with him. He said, quote, it was a four year
Speaker 3: old child, the circumstances in which he was found down
Speaker 3: on the island, and what that little girl had to
Speaker 3: have gone through. I felt terrible about it in every sense,
Speaker 3: not just then. This is the one case that was
Speaker 3: unsolved that still haunts me. That's the part that carries on,
Speaker 3: even speaking from a retired perspective. It has not been
Speaker 3: forgotten end quote.
Speaker 1: So what are we left with here?
Speaker 3: What clues can we take away from what law enforcement
Speaker 3: has said over the years. I keep going back to
Speaker 3: the twenty eighteen interview when officers from the Orange Police
Speaker 3: Department told twelve News Now they believed that the suspect
Speaker 3: knew Denaria and planned the kidnapping. They described the suspect
Speaker 3: as someone who lived locally and as a quote calculated
Speaker 3: killer who carefully planned Nary's kidnapping end quote. They talked
Speaker 3: about how they were transferring a lot of the old
Speaker 3: evidence to digital They said they had a stack of
Speaker 3: old BHS tapes. They talked about how they had a
Speaker 3: lot of evidence, but they were still missing that one
Speaker 3: crucial piece that they believed could lead to an arrest.
Speaker 3: According to METI reports, police remained focused on the same
Speaker 3: person of interest they were focused on back in two
Speaker 3: thousand and two, and presumably the same one they didn't
Speaker 3: have enough evidence to charge in two thousand and four.
Speaker 1: But we have no idea who that is.
Speaker 3: I look back at something that Captain Robert Mman said
Speaker 3: after he retired. He said, quote, bad guys talk. Someone
Speaker 3: out there knows something, someone out there heard someone mention something,
Speaker 3: even if it's just hey, I remember that case and
Speaker 3: so and so said something about it. Anything like that,
Speaker 3: call us end quote. Even after the horrific experience of
Speaker 3: losing her child, Denaria's mother, Jamie continues to speak out
Speaker 3: to local media about Deenaria, about her grief and her pain,
Speaker 3: but also her hope that someday someone will give police
Speaker 3: a piece of information that could help bring Danaria's killer
Speaker 3: to justice. Jamie did an interview with a local news
Speaker 3: station in twenty twenty two in which she talked about
Speaker 3: how grateful she was for all of the help from
Speaker 3: the community. She also said she hoped in some small
Speaker 3: way that Denaria's death could bring the community together. This
Speaker 3: is still an open case. There is a crime Stoppers
Speaker 3: reward that is still active. There is also a reward
Speaker 3: for the State of Texas. Crime Stoppers number is four
Speaker 3: oh nine eight three three tips tips. Anyone with information
Speaker 3: about the case can also contact the Orange Texas Police
Speaker 3: Department directly. I'm Catherine Townsend. This is Helen Gone Murder Line.
Speaker 3: Helen Gone Murder Line is a production of School of
Speaker 3: Humans and iHeart Podcasts. It's written and narrated by me
Speaker 3: Catherine Townsend and.
Speaker 1: Produced by Gabby Watts.
Speaker 3: Special thanks to Amy Tubbs for her research assistance and
Speaker 3: to James Wheaton for legal review. Our theme song is
Speaker 3: by Ben Sale, Executive producers of Virginia Prescott, Brandon Barr,
Speaker 3: and L. C.
Speaker 1: Crowley.
Speaker 3: Listen to Helen Gone ad free by subscribing to the
Speaker 3: iHeart True Crime Plus channel on Apple Podcasts. If you
Speaker 3: are interested in seeing documents and materials from the case,
Speaker 3: you can follow the show on Instagram at Helen gonepod.
Speaker 3: If you have a case you'd like me and my
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