Full of life and with a bright future ahead, Carla Walker was just 17 when she was abducted from a Fort Worth parking lot and murdered in February of 1974. Carla and her boyfriend stopped by a local bowling alley to use the restrooms after attending a Valentine’s Day dance. The perpetrator jerked open the passenger side door and dragged Carla out of the car, threatening her boyfriend with a gun and beating him unconscious. Carla’s body was found in a culvert three days later; she had been raped, beaten, and strangled.
This brutal crime remained unsolved for nearly a half-century, with all available leads exhausted, including conventional forensic DNA testing. In April 2020, Carla’s story was featured on Oxygen’s “The DNA of Murder with Paul Holes.” Shortly after the Carla Walker episode aired, Holes connected Fort Worth PD Detectives Leah Wagner and Jeff Bennett with Othram to discuss the case. Within weeks, Othram’s advanced DNA analysis paired with exceptional investigative work from the detectives led to the identification of a suspect.
