While working a swing shift one afternoon and patrolling a field area on the northeast side of town I heard a small voice tell me to stop the car along a ridge area. For reasons unknown I did stop the car and I got out. Not really understanding why I was doing this I did it anyway and I walked to the top of the berm and looked over the edge. To my utter surprise I found a stash of motorcycles. I stumbled down to them and began checking the license plate numbers or the vehicle identification numbers, if there was no plate. The majority of these were reported stolen. This had to be the dump site for the people who took them to come back and recover them at a later time. When my Sergeant got to my location he was astonished and he asked me how I knew to look there? All I could say was that I just had a 'feeling'. How could I tell him that a still small voice told me to stop and look.
While working a graveyard shift I started at 11 pm and I was assigned the area of town in the northwest corner. My first call was a Burglary of a Habitation. The complainant was a meek young lady that had 2 small children about 2 & 3 yrs old and a newborn baby. She and her husband had just moved to this part of town from the south side where they had lived in a trailer park that was always flooding when it rained hard, which it does once in a while. They were in a duplex that had been converted to a big house. The main door led to the bedroom where the children slept and it was from this room that the only television they owned had been taken. The door was forced open by unknown means but it really wasn't all that secure to start with and she was worried about the safety of herself and her babies.
I stayed there with her for quite a while trying to reassure her that I would be driving by periodically during the night to make sure there was no one prowling around. This lady's husband also worked deep nights and would not be home. She seemed to accept this as I left to respond to another call. I tried to get by the house again during the night as much as I could and I noticed that the lights were on throughout the night. This was not unusual as I knew she was pretty shaken by the events.
At approximately 5 am another patrol unit found a car stopped on the railroad tracks on the northeast side of town. There was no one in the car and the keys were missing. Unfortunately, this was right about the time that the daily train would be passing through town. The officer ran a registration check on the license plates and found that the owner was listed as the lady that lived in the house where the television was stolen from. Finding this odd I went to the house and knocked but no one answered. So I figured she must have been in the car with her kids and it broke down or something. After about 45 minutes of searching it was determined that we needed to just have the car towed or the train would be striking it real soon.
This incident didn't seem quite right to me so about 10 minutes before the end of my shift I again went back to the house. As I was walking up the stairs to the door I noticed a large pair of black shoes on the porch that were not there the previous time. On the shoes I observed specks of red that could have been paint or blood. I noticed the door was slightly ajar..not opened but not closed all the way. I knocked on the door and it appeared that there were lights on inside but due to the sun also coming up and shining brightly I could not be sure. I was sure that I had probable cause to enter but a still small voice told me 'do not go in'. This voice was very adamant that I not enter the residence so I decided to write a note on my business card and leave it on the door. This I did and I left.
I went straight to the police department and after unloading my car and walking in to the back of the station, the desk officer began calling for me to come to the front of the station for a distraught person.
My Sergeant and I both responded and found a male with my business card in his hand. He was nearly hysterical as he related to us that he found my card on the door of his house and as he entered his home his kids were sleeping and he found his wife in the living room lying in a pool of blood and she was dead! Needless to say, myself, the sergeant and other officers went back to the house immediately. Upon our arrival I noted that the pair of shoes that had been on the porch were gone.
My heart dropped. This investigation of the death of Libby Rhymes would encompass several months.
The following year a couple of guys were arrested in Georgetown, Texas, south of Killeen for the murder of a girl named 'orange socks' along I-35.
During the interrogation of these two they related to investigators of another homicide they'd committed in Killeen the previous year. One of our investigators went to the Williamson County Jail to question them about the Libby Rhymes case. They told Captain Coats that they had killed her with an ice pick to the jugular and watched her die as she bled out. One of them killed her because he was jealous of the attention she gave his partner. He relayed also that shortly after they drove her car to the railroad tracks and left it they came back to the house to clean up and it was then that a female police officer came to the door. They were on the other side of the door waiting for me to come in and they were going to kill me too.
When Captain Coats relayed this to me I began to have nightmares and needed to be hypnotized to fully recall everything then to be able to fully let it all go. This team of killers are better known as HENRY LEE LUCAS and OTIS TOOLE. Lucas died in prison and Toole died awaiting execution on death row. Otis Toole also killed the son of John Walsh, Adam Walsh, in 1981. In this murder he kidnapped the 6 year child and decapitated him. Authorities found the boy's head but they never found his body.
I never really knew where that still small voice came from until now.
Now I know that it is that of the HOLY GHOST and it served as my salvation in a very poignant way.
No comments:
Post a Comment