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Post by Graveyardbride on Jan 17, 2019 3:33:06 GMT -5
The Murder of Jacqueline Graham: ‘Someone Hated Her’Around 8:15 on the morning of Friday, April 8, 1988, a man unloading merchandise behind the Academy Sports + Outdoors store at 13300 FM 1960 Road, W. (now occupied by Henry Hudson’s Pub), noticed what he thought was a mannequin. As he approached, he saw what appeared to be blood, realized he was looking at a female body, and rushed inside the store to get the manager. “Hey, there’s something outside,” he called out. “You need to come look.”
When Houston (Texas) law enforcement officers arrived, they found the bloody, mangled corpse of 19-year-old Jacqueline Michelle Graham. What the killer had done to the woman was so disturbing one man said the first thought that came to his mind was “What could a girl that age have done to evoke such hate?” The savagery of the frenzied attack left an indelible imprint on the minds of all who saw it.
The medical examiner later determined the young woman had been shot twice, stabbed in excess of 20 times (some law enforcement officers say as many as 50 times), run over at least twice by a motor vehicle, dragged and sexually-mutilated. The murder was one of the most violent and cold-blooded investigators working the case had ever seen – before or since.
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Back in 1988, the attractive redhead was studying interior design at Houston Community College. On the day preceding her death, she left her garage apartment in Spring, where she had recently moved after breaking up with her boyfriend and leaving the apartment they had shared. She drove to a friend’s house in Steeplechase and from there, the two headed to the 6th Avenue Club (no longer extant) at 6100 Highway 6.
At some point during the night, Graham’s former boyfriend turned up at the club and according to Sgt. Abraham Alanis, cold case investigator for the Harris County Sheriff’s Office, the two were seen arguing. The friend had gone home earlier, but it was after midnight when Graham finally left the bar. The last time anyone other than her killer saw the young woman alive was around 2:20 a.m. when she was observed sitting in the cold – the temperature dropped to 52° that night – on a bridge abutment near the intersection of West Little York and Highway 6, a little more than four miles from the location where her body was found. The girl’s bloody clothing was recovered from a dumpster at a service station not far from the club.
Graham’s former boyfriend was one of the first interviewed by investigators, but there was nothing on which to hold him. For the next several weeks, detectives tracked those closest to the teen, even at her funeral – there are photocopies of the guest book in the file. Because she was on probation for a 1986 drug conviction, officers also checked out local dealers in case the murder was the result of a drug deal gone wrong.
Commenting on the cold case seven years ago, Sgt. Dean Holtke of the Harris County Sheriff’s Office, said, “I’ve been dealing with death cases now for 17 to 18 years and it’s the worst one I’ve ever seen. ... She’s seen on Highway 6 just sitting there by herself. I mean, it could have been anybody that came by and picked her up.”
But others are convinced the brutality of the killing rules out a stranger. “Someone hated her. There was a lot of anger there,” Alanis insisted. “I’ve been in homicide eight years and I’ve worked a lot of cases, a lot of gruesome cases. Looking at this one ... this one’s bad.”
In 2007, cold case investigators submitted Graham’s bloodstained clothing to a crime lab, hoping new technology would reveal the murderer’s DNA, but, thus far, there are no suspects. Nevertheless, advances in DNA testing could lead to an identification in the future. “We’re just hoping for that one lead that’s going to open the case back up,” Alanis added.
If you have any information about this cold case, please call Crime Stoppers at 713-222-8477.Sources: Courtney Fischer, KTRK, May 14, 2018; Robert Arnold, KPRC-TV, November 21, 2011; The Port Arthur News, April 10, 1988.
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Post by kitty on Jan 17, 2019 14:06:49 GMT -5
If she was killed by someone who hated her, it would have to be the ex-boyfriend.
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Post by madeline on Jan 17, 2019 18:31:27 GMT -5
For a girl to be sitting out on a bridge on a cold night, either she was waiting for someone or she was upset about something.
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Post by pat on Nov 4, 2020 10:36:14 GMT -5
I don't suppose there have been any updates in this case. I hope the investigators in Texas are still trying to find a DNA match. Sometimes I think they just get tired of trying to solve cold cases like this.
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Post by Kate on Nov 4, 2020 20:43:42 GMT -5
I'm not sure that's true. I've read that sometimes men (I guess women too) go into a frenzy when they're killing someone and they keep on beating or stabbing them even after they're dead.
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annr
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Post by annr on Dec 8, 2021 0:24:56 GMT -5
She was a friend of mine and my roommate's. I was a hostess / waitress at the restaurant her boyfriend also worked at. We became friends with Michelle (she went by her middle name) through him. She stayed with us once after she got into a bad fight with him - he threatened to run over her cat.
After she was killed, we did speak with the homicide detective several times, as did other co-workers and friends. Most of us assumed the boyfriend did it (and it appeared the cops did as well), although there were a few other conspiracy theories floating around.
It was quite shocking to me as I discovered she was dead while watching the news and seeing her picture on the screen. I search her name every so often, hoping it will finally one day be solved.
Note: I found this forum through a linked page on Reddit and also posted this info there.
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Post by kitty on Dec 8, 2021 1:01:48 GMT -5
She was a friend of mine and my roommate's. I was a hostess / waitress at the restaurant her boyfriend also worked at. We became friends with Michelle (she went by her middle name) through him. She stayed with us once after she got into a bad fight with him - he threatened to run over her cat. After she was killed, we did speak with the homicide detective several times, as did other co-workers and friends. Most of us assumed the boyfriend did it (and it appeared the cops did as well), although there were a few other conspiracy theories floating around. It was quite shocking to me as I discovered she was dead while watching the news and seeing her picture on the screen. I search her name every so often, hoping it will finally one day be solved. Note: I found this forum through a linked page on Reddit and also posted this info there. |
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annr
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Post by annr on Dec 9, 2021 22:21:52 GMT -5
He quit working at the restaurant and I never saw him again. I'm pretty sure I've found his linkedin and facebook profile, but it's hard to tell after so many years. His name is not an uncommon Hispanic name, although not super common.
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Post by JoannaL on Dec 10, 2021 1:53:40 GMT -5
He quit working at the restaurant and I never saw him again. I'm pretty sure I've found his linkedin and facebook profile, but it's hard to tell after so many years. His name is not an uncommon Hispanic name, although not super common. |
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annr
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Post by annr on Dec 11, 2021 0:12:43 GMT -5
His name is Joseph Leal. We worked at Casa Ole restaurant on Hwy 6 near West Little York. The nightclub she was last seen in I think was called 6th Avenue? something like that. It was located on Hwy 6 and Timber Creek just down the street from the restaurant. We all frequented that club and went there sometimes after work. They did not check IDs. I was underage at the time and went there a lot. However, I was not actually there that night.
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Post by Graveyardbride on Dec 11, 2021 3:07:57 GMT -5
Thank you for the additional information and welcome. The following, which was written not long after the murder, is from the Texas A&M Newspaper Collection:
Joseph Leal was already calling friends in search of his missing girlfriend on April 8, 1988, when detective Marcel Dionne got an early morning call that a woman’s body had been found in northwest Harris County.
What Dionne found would shock veteran investigators and intertwine the lives of the sheriff s officer and 23-year-old Leal for months to come. The mutilated body of a woman sprawled face-down behind a store was Jacqueline Michelle Graham – Leal’s on-again, off-again girlfriend.
Still unresolved after more than a year, Dionne admits he is obsessed with a “gut feeling” that Leal committed the gruesome crime, and he has endured sleepless nights in pursuit of a key to the case.
But at least one other investigator is not so sure, and Leal says he has been hounded by authorities who refer to him as “the slasher,” who ask to be seated at his table at the restaurant where he is a waiter and who once handcuffed him at work before taking him in for questioning. Leal is candid about being tagged as the prime suspect, but continues to say he didn’t do it. Asked about Dionne, he told The Houston Post: “I hate him.”
Sgt. John Gessner of the sheriffs department said he questions whether Leal was involved because he has stuck to the same alibi during numerous interrogations. “You can’t be that consistent . . . You can’t play with fire for that long and not get burned,” Gessner said, adding that he believes the 19-year-old woman may have been attacked at random.
Dionne, a 10-year veteran of the sheriffs department, disagrees. “The anger that was demonstrated against her indicated it was someone who had cared about her,” Dionne said. But despite exhaustive investigation, he has not found the evidence to file charges against Leal.
Leal stands firm. “Why would I want to kill my girlfriend? 1 loved her . . . We were a team.”
She was last seen alive during an argument with Leal at a bar. But he said the argument, caused by jealousy, was unimportant. “So what if we had fights. Everybody does.”
Investigators who found Graham’s body the next day said she had been stabbed and slashed at least 15 times, run over by a car, and was so sexually mutilated that it was impossible to tell whether she was raped. “In all the times I had worked homicides, I’ve never run into anything of this nature,” Dionne said.
Leal said that since the slaying, he has felt that he was “being watched all the time.” He was stopped by police for walking on a freeway, repeatedly questioned and took several polygraph tests, the results of which were described by investigators as “inconclusive.” Once, he said, investigators showed him pictures of Graham’s body and said “Look what you did to your girlfriend.”
Dionne denied Leal was treated so abruptly.
Leal said the slaying and the continuing suspicion have changed him, causing him to drink too much and to attempt suicide.
Authorities said Leal often calls to see if new leads have developed.
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annr
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Post by annr on Dec 11, 2021 22:46:30 GMT -5
Thank you for finding and sharing that article. I still think he did it - based no what she told us when she stayed with us after a fight, he was abusive towards her. But in the off chance it was not him, the only other explanation would be a serial killer that happened to pick her up. The damage done to her was very brutal and sick. I believe the serial killer angle had been looked at, and there were no known ones in the area at the time, but I could be wrong.
She was a very sweet, smart, beautiful girl.
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Post by pat on Dec 14, 2021 17:37:15 GMT -5
Thank you for finding and sharing that article. I still think he did it - based no what she told us when she stayed with us after a fight, he was abusive towards her. But in the off chance it was not him, the only other explanation would be a serial killer that happened to pick her up. The damage done to her was very brutal and sick. I believe the serial killer angle had been looked at, and there were no known ones in the area at the time, but I could be wrong. She was a very sweet, smart, beautiful girl. |
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Post by catherine on Jan 19, 2022 15:58:09 GMT -5
He still lives in Houston and has nothing to hide, he has taken and given his DNA, no match, poor guy has gone thru enough and still the bashing I see for him |
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Post by ricosauve3 on Jan 19, 2022 17:38:42 GMT -5
Yes I am, and it was very tragic to what happened to Michelle, I loved her with all my heart, we had issues, we were young and in love, everyone is always gonna say the boyfriend/husband did it, I do it, we were both very jealous people, just want people to have an open mind about, it hurts me when I see bad mouthing of me, it was not way I was raised, Michelle helped me out tremendously when my mom passed when I was 19, she comforted me, and told me everything was gonna be ok, it’s been 34 years.now and still about her, I’ve always been cooperative with the police, i have given them my DNA, I want justice for Michelle and her family, hoping one day that will come true
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