The shocking turn of events stunned everyone in the courtroom and came after decades of denial from the suspect.
A 78-year-old Texas man has halted his murder trial and confessed to killing a teenage girl following a Valentine’s dance 47 years ago, People reported.
Glen Samuel McCurley confessed to the 1974 abduction and murder of Carla Walker in Tarrant County. McCurley was immediately sentenced to life in prison and the trial was concluded.
McCurley maintained his innocence for four decades until this week, NBC DFW reported.
"I wish you'd done this a long time ago," Cindy Stone, the sister of the victim, said in court after the suspect's admission of guilt. "You kept saying in your confession that, 'that wasn't you,' 'it just wasn't you.'
"I spent 17 years in the same bedroom with my sister. I knew her. She was 4 feet 11 inches, 100 pounds. You had choices. Lots of choices that night. You went out to kill somebody,” she added.
McCurley was arrested last September after a break in the decades-old cold case came about through DNA, which connected the suspect to the crime thanks to advances in genealogy and DNA testing, People reported.
On February 17, 1974, Walker was sitting in the passenger seat of her boyfriend’s car following a Valentine’s dance at their high school. The couple went to the local bowling alley following the dance at Western Hills High School when a man approached the car and pulled Walker from the vehicle. Walker’s boyfriend was pistol-whipped and knocked unconscious, according to reports.
Her body was found two days later in an abandoned culvert, strangled and sexually assaulted.
"It’s torment, it’s torment. You try to push it to the back of your mind but it always comes forward," Rodney McCoy, Walker's boyfriend, told Fox 4.
McCoy even testified in court and said he let Walker’s father down for not protecting his daughter and did all he could to protect her.
"I remember I was holding her and the blood started flowing down my forehead down into my eyes," he told the court. "I'm not sure how many times I got hit. I believe it was more than once, according to Carla's reaction. She screamed, 'Stop hitting him!'"
McCoy said McCurley pointed his gun at them and fired three times but no bullets were released from the pistol. He saw her get taken from the car but fell unconscious due to the blows to his head.
Cops later found a magazine for a .22 caliber Ruger pistol in the culvert and had a hunch it belonged to McCurley, who at the time, was a previously convicted car thief, People reported. McCurley lived just a mile from the bowling alley and purchased that type of weapon.
When interviewed by cops soon after, McCurley claimed his gun had been stolen while he was fishing and didn’t report because he was an ex-con, police said. McCurley, who worked nights, was off the night of the abduction and the next day and his wife was out of town, leaving him alone, authorities said. However, McCurley denied any involvement in Walker’s death and abduction.
It was a cold case for decades until advanced DNA technology preserved from Walker’s clothing led to his arrest, according to reports.
Police were able to obtain McCurley’s DNA from his garbage last summer and it matched the DNA found on Walker. McCurley was again questioned in July 2020 by police for his involvement in Walker’s death and continued to deny it and volunteered to take a DNA swab test. When the results returned, it again matched the DNA from 1974 found on Walker.
McCurley was then arrested and charged with her abduction and murder.
In a videotaped confession, played to jurors, he was asked by investigators, "How did you kill her?”
"I just choked her," McCurley said.
Following the shocking turn of events and admission, prosecutor Kim D’Avignon told Fox 4 that “I assume that the evidence we presented in court to this point finally made him realize there was no out.
“He was guilty, he knew he was guilty and it was time for this family to receive the closure that he is guilty," she added.
D’Avignon said she isn’t ruling out whether McCurley may possibly be linked to other unsolved crimes.
“There are boxes of cases of murder from the 70s that I don’t know. If we could get the money to test those things, if he did others or if some of those cases are just related to each other,” she told NBC DWF.
