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In the early morning hours of July thirtieth, nineteen seventy seven, Charles Alvin Botwright was hanging out with his cousin Ronnie Lewis at the home of another cousin of theirs named Lloyd Harryman in Wesley, Arkansas.

According to police statements, the three cousins stayed up all night drinking beer and catching up.

They were having a good time, and early in the morning they decided to go fishing in an area called war Eagle, which is about twenty two miles away At around five am.

They piled into Charles's truck and started driving, but they needed some food, so on the route they decided to stop by the Fredericks seven to eleven to buy some hot dogs to roast during their fishing trip.

The Frederick's Grocery and Service station was located at the intersection of Highway sixty eight and twenty three in the northwest portion of Huntsville, Arkansas.

In a small town, it's a popular destination to get early morning gas or late night snacks, and back in nineteen seventy seven, it was opened twenty four hours a day.

As Charles, Lloyd, and Ronnie pulled up to the store, two women pulled up right behind them.

Charles told police they talked to the two women briefly.

The women were driving a Jeep and had a sick pig in the back of their car that was sedated.

One of the women made a comment about taking the sick pig to the vet, and as they were chatting, Lloyd, Charles, and the other woman walked into the store together and according to Charles, walked back toward the meet counter.

The way that the store was laid out was that there was a checkout counter located in the middle of the store.

It's U shaped with a cash register in stools inside it.

At first, they couldn't see anyone inside the store, but then Charles said that as he got closer to the checkout area, while the other woman and Ronnie were falling behind them, Lois said, it looks like someone is heard up there.

At that point, Charles said that he walked up to the left side of the register and saw a man's feet sticking out.

The man was twenty year old University of Arkansas student Rex Terrell, who worked the overnight shift at Frederick's.

He was lying in a pool of blood and, according to the police report, flouncing around trying to get up.

He was gasping for breath.

It looked like Rex had been shot multiple times.

One of the women tried to give him mouth to mouth resuscitation, but it was too late.

He died there on the floor of that gas station in a pool of his own blood.

While they were trying to save Rex, his coworker, Sally Dobson, showed up to start her shift.

She told police she got there at around five forty or five forty five am.

Sally told police that one of the women in the jeep stopped her as she was coming in and told her there was a boy in there hurt really bad, and that's when she said she saw Rex laying on the floor and saw all the blood.

The police asked Sally if she noticed anything unusual about the register.

She said that it was fixed like she would fix it if she had to leave for a short while.

She said there was nothing unusual about that setup.

She told police afterwards that Rex had set the register up like that before, but then there's no more detail about that, so I wonder why Rex and Sally would have made the decision to leave the register that way.

Unfortunately, there's no more follow up about this in the police report, and Sally told police something else.

She said that she believed that the store's owner, mister Frederick, had decided that this would be the last weekend that the store stayed open all night.

But there's nothing more about that decision either or why it was made.

Was it just a practical decision or could it have had something to do with safety?

And police noted that nothing appeared to have been taken from the store, So if robbery wasn't the motive, what was Sally and all the rest of Rex's coworkers, as well as his family, friends, and the whole community, wanted to know who would want to shoot a likable, kind and hard working young man with seemingly no enemies and leave him there to die in a pool of his own blood.

I'm Catherine Townsend.

Over the past seven years of making my true crime podcast, Helen Gone, I've learned that there is no such thing as a small town where murder never happens.

I've received hundreds of messages from people all around the country asking for help with an unsolved murder that's affected them, their families, and their communities.

If you have a case you'd like me and my team to look into, you can reach out to us at our Helen Gone Murder Line at six seven eight seven four four six one four five.

That's six seven eight seven four four six one four five, or you can send us a message on Instagram at Helen gonepod.

This is Helen Gone Murder Line.

Police rushed to the scene and talked to the witnesses, the women with a sick pig and the three cousins Ronnie, Boy and Charles.

Ronnie told pretty much the same story as the other guys.

He said that Charles had come running out of the gas station and gotten him and said there was a boy in the store that had been hurt real bad.

Ronnie said, quote, I went into the store and saw the boy lying in a pool of blood.

He kept trying to get up, and we had to hold him down as we thought that that would be the best thing for him.

Charles said that one of the women was trying to give Rex mouth to mouth, but that he died right there before help arrived.

End quote.

Police reported that Rex was wearing a Levi's brown belt with a gold buckle and a white and blue and red check shirt, and that he was lying on his back about six feet away from the checkout counter, with his left arm folded across his chest.

The report noted that Rex's clothing was not in disarray or torn, and that the scene showed quote no signs of any physical struggle end quote.

In fact, other than Rex's body, there were no real signs of a physical struggle in the store at all.

It didn't look like a fight had broken out.

Someone had walked in and for some reason decided to shoot Rex, and police needed to figure out why.

They determined that Rex had been shot multiple times, once in the left side, once in the shoulder, and once in the arm.

And near the body, they found three expended thirty eight caliber cartridges with the brand name Remington Peters.

When police were talking to the witnesses, all of their stories were basically exactly the same.

But before they left the scene, Ronnie told police that Boy and Charles had mentioned seeing a car, a black nineteen seventy one Camaro or a Firebird headed from the direction of the store, going east on Highway sixty eight toward Huntsville.

In addition to the Camaro, police were also exploring leeds on other vehicles in the area and looking to talk to anyone who went into or came by the store that night, and it didn't take long to find them.

A lot of people had come in and out of the store on the night Rex was shot, including some police officers.

Carl Richardson Goodman Junior told police that he and another officer went into Frederick's at approximately three twenty am.

Carl said that they went to the store to exchange the milk that they had bought from Fredericks that was for some reason undrinkable.

He said they spoke briefly to Rex and noticed that his eyes were bloodshot, but he said they only talked about exchanging the milk and then the officers left Mike Atwell, a Madison County deputy, said that he had also been on duty the night of the shooting.

According to police records, he was one of the officers who responded to a call about a body earlier that night, which he said ended up just being a drunk person.

He said, by the time police had dealt with that drama and got the drunk person under control, it was four forty three am according to the police logsheet.

This is a small town, so if you wanted to buy early morning gas, Fredericks was one of the only stations in town.

Mike said in his statement he is a gas conscious person, always checking the gas levels in his cruiser, so he thought about buying gas from Fredericks and was kind of looking in the direction of the seven to eleven store as he went past it, but in the end he decided against it.

He said that he was driving past Fredericks at around four or fifty five am, and he said that he noticed a van parked there.

Mike said he didn't notice any movement inside the store, but then at around six am, he got the call about the shooting at Frederick's and responded to the scene.

That's when he remembered seeing the van.

Police tried to track the van down.

In police reports, it says that officers tracked two brown vans that had been in the area at the time, but they figured out that neither of them were connected to the crime.

A few days later, on Tuesday, August second, Sheriff Ralph Baker told a local paper, the Springfield Newsleader, that police had no leads.

He said, quote, we don't have anything good going at all end quote, and he stated that they had no suspects when it came to motive.

Sheriff Baker told a local newspaper that although there was no sign that the Frederick's register had been tampered with, the police had a theory that the shooter may have come in there to rob the store and quote gotten scared off.

According to the documents we were able to obtain via Foya, Rex was shot in the arm, the shoulder, and the left side with a high caliber weapon.

Whoever shot him seemed to have made a decision at some point to finish the job.

Sheriff Ralph Baker told the Madison County Record that the victim was shot with a three fifty seven or thirty eight caliber weapon.

But what if robbery wasn't the motive?

Could this have been personal?

Rex Tarrell was born on January thirteenth, nineteen fifty seven.

He had three brothers and a sister, and everyone seemed to love him.

Police interviewed a lot of people who knew Rex, and none of them said they could think of any reason why anyone would want to hurt him.

He was a hard working student at the University of Arkansas and worked several jobs to make ends meet, including at a local poultry plant and the job at Frederick's.

His family was fairly new to the area.

They lived in Florida for years and had all moved to Huntsville shortly before Rex was killed.

Rex had no local known enemies, so police wondered what was Rex doing before he came in for his shift.

Did something happen earlier that night?

And they found out that the night he was shot, Rex had a double date.

Rex went out with his friend Jim Patnaud and Jim's girlfriend Susan Gearman, and Jim's sister Debbie Pierce.

Susan told police that around six thirty pm that the four of them went to the seventy one drive in in Springdale, Arkansas.

She said they only caught the last twenty minutes of the first movie and then watched a movie called Sugarland Express.

She said they didn't stay for the last feature.

They were just hanging out and drinking beers, and then Jim, Debbie, and Susan split a joint, but Susan told police that Rex refused any marijuana.

Then they piled in Rex's car to get back to Huntsville because Rex had to start his shift at Frederick's.

He normally worked the twelve thirty am to six thirty am shift, but he had spoken to his boss, mister Frederick that night and asked if he could come to work an hour late because he had a date.

His boss said that was fine.

On the way back to Huntsville, Susan said that Rex dropped her and Jim off at Jim's house.

She said they got into Jim's car and went up to Frederick's to get some gas.

She said they hung around for a few minutes.

She said Rex was there too, talking about being early for work.

She estimated that at that time it was about one twenty am.

That was the last time she saw Rex.

Susan said that Jim took her home after that and when she talked to him the next day, he told her that after dropping her off, he had driven back to Fredericks and had a sandwich and talked to Rex for a while.

Police asked Susan about the various vehicles witnessed near the gas station.

They asked if she knew anyone in town who owned a Buick, Firebird, Camaro or Transam.

She mentioned a local woman who owned a black Firebird, but the description of the vehicle sounded very distinctive, gold pinstriping and an eagle on the hood, and neither of the witnesses had mentioned those details.

Police talked to Jim's sister, Debbie Pierce.

She said that the date with Rex had been a setup by her brother.

She said that Rex picked her up at around nine oh five pm and that at that point they stopped at the Frederick store where they bought some beer and had a few drinks.

This was when, according to Debbie, Rex asked his boss if he could come in an hour late, and his boss agreed.

She said that Rex drove her back home at around one fifteen am and walked her to the door.

At that time, Debbie said he told her he had a good time, but that he had to get back to work and he left.

But there is another detail about Debbie Pierce in this police report.

Debbie Pierce was married.

Debbie Pierce, who Rex went out with on a date a few hours before he was murdered, was legally married but separated from her husband.

She told police they had a young son and that although they had split, there was no animosity between her and her husband.

There was no reason to believe that he was involved in Rex's killing, so was this random or personal?

Either way?

Once word got out that there was a killer on the loose, local residents were terrified.

Sheriff Ralph Baker told multiple sources that he was closing down a local Girl Scouts camp that was near the store and sending ninety eight girls home as a precautionary measure.

The Rex Terror Reward Fund was established August tenth, nineteen seventy seven, by the American Savings and Loan Association in Huntsville.

Local businesses donated money.

The community came together to support Rex's family.

As we said earlier, Rex was very well liked in the community, but there had been one incident at a nearby softball field, Huntsville Softball Park in May of nineteen seventy seven.

Rex was there when a fight broke out.

Rex's friend Jim, who was out with him on the double date the night Rex was shot, told police that a man named Ronnie Gwinn was drunk at the part and that after the fight broke out, Ronnie was arrested.

A trooper named Tom Brown of the Arkansas State Police arrested Ronnie and took him to the Sheriff's office.

Jim told police that on July thirty first, the day after Rex's shooting, he was with a friend of his name, George Edgman.

They were hanging out at Frederick's when Ronnie gwyn came into the business and said that his boss had bought him a three fifty seven magnum and he wasn't going to take any shit from anybody anymore.

At that point, Jim said that Ronnie was talking about the incident in May at the ballpark, and that Jim said, quote, I heard today that a guy had been shot, and that everybody on the Frederick softball team was going to get it since this thing happened, and the other night at Frederick's about Rex, I'm really scared.

I was with Rex the night before he was killed.

End quote.

So it seemed as though Jim was concerned that maybe Rex's shooting had happened in retaliation to the ballpark incident, that maybe Frederick's employees were being targeted somehow.

Police talked to Jim's friend, George Edgemon, who backed up his story and told police that he had gone down to Frederick's at around seven pm on Sunday, the thirty first of July, the day after Rex was killed.

George said, quote, Ronnie Gwyn asked me about the victim, if he had said anything about who shot him, if he was still alive, et cetera, and asked what evidence the police had in the case.

He also wanted to know where the victim was shot, if we knew who did it, how many times he was shot, Questions of this nature end quote.

And he repeated what Jim had said that Ronnie was telling them that he had three fifty seven magnum now and nobody was going to touch him again, but then George said that Ronnie behaved as though he had no animosity against Tom Brown, the trooper who arrested him, and according to police reports, it doesn't seem like Ronnie had made any threats about Rex specifically.

Unfortunately, this is one of just many times in the police report where it seems as though investigative leads were just completely dropped because there's no more about the ballpark incident or any follow up After this.

Police knew that Rex had been shot multiple times and that the manner of death was homicide.

The sheriff made a comment in the newspaper about the bullet being from a thirty eight caliber or three fifty seven, and police did try to track down the murder weapon.

On Sunday, July thirty first, at around one pm, the employee of a tire shop about three hundred yards west of the homicide scene called police to tell them they found a thirty eight special cartridge case outside their business.

Police took the casing and for testing, but were unable to find anything of evident cherry value.

They pulled two bullets from Rex's body, but those bullets were described as mutilated, and even though Rex had been shot three times.

They could not find that third bullet.

Police continued to look for anyone in the community who saw anything out of the ordinary.

On the night of the shooting, a man came forward who said he was headed to work in the early morning hours of July thirtieth at the Huntsville Ready Mixed Cement Company, which was located just across the highway from Fredericks.

The man said, as he was waiting to make a left turn into the driveway of his workplace, he was waiting on a slow moving vehicle, and while he was waiting, he glanced over to Fredericks and saw boy at the front door of Fredericks looking out of the store.

He said, quote, he looked like a wild person.

He was in his twenties, approximately six feet tall, slim, long blonde hair.

He acted real nervous.

He would go back in from the front door and then come back again end quote.

He said that he noticed vehicles part by the store.

One of them was a white Chevrolet pickup around a nineteen sixty six model.

He also noticed a Toyota four wheel drive vehicle and a green Nova that he thought was Rex's parked in front of Frederick's.

This sounded like it could be a promising lead, but from the description of the vehicles that we got from the police reports, reading through this, it seems likely that he was describing the two women and the three cousins, since they were driving a pickup truck and a jeep.

Even though this happened in a pre surveillance camera era and even in the early morning hours, it struck me reading this there was a lot of activity happening in and around this store.

There were witnesses, including police officers, who came to the store or drove by all the way up until a few minutes before five am.

All of them said it seemed like Rex was fine.

With so much time accounted for, and the fact that Rex was bleeding to death on the floor when the three cousins and two women arrived, it seems very likely that whatever happened to Rex happened a few minutes before they got there.

Police continued to look for the Camaro.

They interviewed a man who owned a nineteen seventy seven black Camaro with no pin striping.

He said that he had been at Frederick's on the twenty ninth, at approximately ten thirty pm with a friend of his.

He said they got a coke, he dropped his friend off at home, and then he was home by ten forty five pm.

The man, David Gaskell, said that after that he stayed there and did not go out again.

He said he did know Rex Tarrel.

He said he did know Rex's sister, but he said he had no involvement in anything that happened to Rex.

David did give police the names of some other people who owned similar cars, including two people who owned black transams and a woman who owned a blue nineteen seventy six Camaro.

Natalie Wilheit was another worker at Fredericks who gave an interview about Rex.

She said, quote, I'm very upset over Rex being killed because I can't understand why someone would want to do that to Rex.

He was quiet and I thought he didn't have any enemies at all.

End quote.

Natalie said that Rex had invited her to go water skiing with him on the Saturday before the murder, but she said she ended up not going.

She said she never ended up going out with him socially.

She said that on the night of the shooting, she had gone to a haunted house with some friends.

After she and her friends got back to Huntsville.

They went riding around and stopped at Frederick's at around three am.

She said that she was close to the store owner, mister Frederick and his family.

She said while she was at the store that night, she talked to Rex and then went home.

I mentioned her interview because police asked her something else.

They asked her if she'd ever seen any drug dealing inside the store.

She said that she had not.

That's the only mention I can find in the whole case file that indicated police were exploring any angle connected to drugs.

But there's no evidence that there was drug dealing inside the store.

From the case file, Rex occasionally drank, but did zero drugs.

He didn't even smoke pot, according to statements given by his friends and his father.

Police interviewed the owners of the various vehicles mentioned and ran the plates, but they came back with nothing.

It seemed as though the investigation hit a dead end.

Rex Terrell's family posted a statement in the personal section of the Madison County Record on August fourth, just a few days after Rex was killed.

Their statement read quote, the family of Rex Terrell want to thank the people of this area for their wonderful expressions of sympathy extended to a family of New Corners.

We feel proud that we live in such a beautiful country among so many nice people.

End quote.

No one was arrested or charged in connection with Rex's murder.

There were no suspects publicly named, and it seemed as though the case went cold, and over the years police gave out pretty much zero information.

But police did give us access to the complete case file after our foyer request, and we discovered that back then police had explored another motive other than robbery.

In nineteen seventy eight, police found out via a confidential source that a man named Roger John Harvey might have information related to Rex's shooting.

Roger worked at the Easterling Wood Products Lumber Company in Huntsville at the time of Rex's murder.

According to the reports, he was interviewed by the Sheriff, Ralph Baker and Sergeant Doug Fogley of the Arkansas State Police Criminal Investigation Division.

Doug Fogley contacted Roger and said in his report that at first, Roger was extremely wary of officers and did not want to discuss any potential information that he had.

But quote after being explained the mechanics of a prosecutor's subpoena UOTE.

Basically, after police told him they would compel him to give the information one way or another, Roger said that he did have crucial information about the shooting.

Roger quote reluctantly said that a reliable source in a position to have personal knowledge, whose name he didn't specify, told him that a man named Joe Dobson murdered Rex.

Joe lived in Madison County.

The reason that Roger gave for why Joe killed Rex allegedly, Rex was quote carrying on an affair with Joe's wife, Sally Dobson end quote.

Now Sally Dobson with someone police had already talked to, because she worked with Rex as a cashier at Frederick's seven to eleven grocery store, and she was one of the first people to arrive at the scene as Rex was gasping for air.

The report ended by stating, quote, after obtaining this limited information, Sheriff Ralph Baker decided investigation should can continue into the allegations made by Harvey end quote.

But even though the sheriff himself suggested this lead should be investigated, there's nothing else in the case file that indicates that happened, and it seems likely that nothing did happen.

Police did not reveal who the anonymous source was, or if they even found out who it was.

There's no evidence that they ever followed up with this person, or talked to Sally Dobson again, or followed up with her husband, Joe Dobson.

If they did, it's not part of the case file, but from what we saw.

There's also nothing else in the case file that indicates that Sally and Rex were anything more than coworkers.

Then, just three months after police got that lead, on August twenty ninth, nineteen seventy eight, Sergeant Fogley requested that the investigation be put on inactive status, saying that no new investigative leads were forthcoming.

In that same typed report, he said that the FBI was pursuing a lead in regard to the case, and that if that investigation proved fruitful, the case could be reopened at any time.

The case file does show that before pausing their investigation, police were trying to find the weapon that was used to kill Rex, the one that left behind the three thirty eight caliber bullet cartridge cases.

In March of nineteen seventy nine, they questioned a man named Lee Remington about a Smith and Wesson modelton revolver and how he got it into his possession.

He told the police he had bought the gun from his brother in law, thirty one year old Henry otto Kuchen.

At first, Lee said he got the weapon around two years ago.

Later, he said it would have had to have been possibly the late summer of nineteen seventy eight, because that's when he was working over time and had extra money.

He said he paid his brother in law, Henry, eighty dollars for the gun.

At the time, Henry lived in Pierce, Missouri, and Henry told Lee that he had bought the gun from a man named Leroy Finney, a sheet rock hangar from Moname, Missouri.

Henry Kuchin was listed as a potential suspect in police documents.

In March of nineteen seventy nine, investigators took a thirty eight caliber special Smith and Wesson gun from his home.

Police also collected spent casings from the Wesson Model ten revolver that Lee Remington said he bought from Henry.

According to a later report, testing showed that Lee's weapon was not a match to the evidence taken from the crime scene, but the test on the gun taken directly from Henry were less conclusive.

According to the firearms examiner at the State Crime Laboratory, the bullets from that gun and from the casings taken from the crime scene were tested against each other, and they couldn't be sure if they were a match.

The report stated, quote, there are similarities of individual markings noted on evidence and test specimens that indicate that they could have been fired in this weapon.

However, there are insufficient matching striations for a positive identification.

This could be due to the lapse of time between the commission of the crime and the seizing of the suspect weapon end quote.

Years went by and nothing happened with the case.

But then decades later, in twenty fifteen, police got what appeared to be a huge potential break.

A man named Rory Gregory wrote a letter from prison in which he said he had information about Rex's killing that he had held back for almost forty years.

Rory was imprisoned on unrelated charges, and Rory claimed that back in June of nineteen seventy seven, he witnessed Rex's murder.

A month after, police received a letter from a prisoner that said he had information about Rex Terrell's death, they interviewed him.

Rory Gregory said back in the mid to late seventies, when he was fifteen or sixteen years old, he was driving around in his dad's truck with a friend of his named Dale.

He said Dale wanted to go to Fayetteville and score some drugs, but he said he knew his dad would be mad at him if he drove the car that far away, so they pulled over into a shopping center where they were talking to a guy named Wayne Starkey.

Suddenly a cop pulled in.

Wayne was concerned that he was about to be arrested because he had some outstanding parking tickets.

So Rory's story is that Wayne asked Dale and Rory to take his car so the police wouldn't have pounded, and that car was a dark green nineteen seventy Camaro.

Rory's story is that he and Dale agreed to take the Camaro, and Dale eagerly drove it to Fayetville.

According to Rory, as they drove through Huntsville, they stopped at the Frederick Store Rory said that as he was walking into the store planning on getting something to drink, that he heard three loud booms and saw Dale's shooting some guy.

He did not know the man's name.

Rory said he said to Dale, what the hell is going on?

But Dale looked at him like he was going to shoot Rory and told Rory to get back in the car.

This detail was apparently enough for investigators to believe they needed to take another look at Rex's body, and so in March of twenty twenty, Rex Tarrell's body was exhumed from Albn Cemetery.

KNWA ran a short news item on the story, saying the Madison County Sheriff's Office had exhumed Rex's body in Huntsville as part of a criminal investigation.

The article stated at the time, the Sheriff's office website list Rex's unknown killer as the most wanted person in the county.

Prosecuting Attorney Matt Durrett confirmed that the body was being sent to Little Rock as part of an ongoing criminal investigation, but police did not reveal what evidence led them to order that Rex's body be dug up.

At the time, Sheriff Rick Evans told the Madison County Register that due to a gag order issued by a judge, he couldn't tell the newspaper anything about why the body was being exhumed or what evidence had led police to make that decision.

But later documents obtained via FOYA revealed that they found something when they dug the body up, a third bullet, one that had not been discovered in the initial investigation.

Remember, Rex had been shot three times, but they only found two bullets in his body.

But police still seemed to be struggling with elements of Rory's story.

He said that after the shooting, he and Dale drove off and that he was in complete shock.

He said he had no idea why Dale had shot the cashier.

He said they stopped to siphon some gas in Harrison and that eventually Dale dropped him off in Mountain Home at his house and threatened to shoot him if he ever said anything to any one.

But was Rory's letter credible According to police records, they did check arrest records for Wayne Starkey.

They eventually found his arrest record.

He was booked under a different name.

Police confirmed Wayne was arrested on that date, July twenty ninth, nineteen seventy seven, so it's plausible that he could have given his vehicle to someone else.

The details about the arrest matches, and Wayne Starkey did own a Camaro and Rex was shot three times, but there were also some red flags.

First of all, when police questioned Rory, he told them he had brought the letter he wrote in with him to refresh his memory, saying he didn't quite remember the details he wrote about.

He said that it was the mid seventies.

Things were wild back then, everything was pretty fair game, and he had trouble pinpointing even the year.

And he had the time wrong because initially he said the shooting went down between ten and eleven PM.

He said he was positive that he was back at home at his dad's trailer in Mountain Home by daybreak, and it wasn't until after police told him that had been shot at around five am that he said his memory could have been wrong.

It could have been early morning.

Now, this still could have potentially matched the evidence, because daylight was around six twenty am and Rex was killed around five am, so it might have just been later than Rory thought.

But there were other factors.

Because Rory made it clear in his letter that in return for his cooperation, he wanted to be let out of prison, so even if his information was credible, investigators did have to consider his motives.

Police also noted in later reports that even if Rory was telling the partial truth, they all wondered if there had been a second person with him in the car that night at all, or could he have been alone.

They stated that Dale, the friend whom Rory said shot Rex, had been eliminated as a suspect.

In the end, the bullet taken from Rex's body was too mutilated to be useful for forensic testing, and even after e Zomos being a body police were no closer to catching the killer.

It's been almost fifty years since Rex Tarrell was murdered at Frederick's, and to this day, no one has ever been publicly named as a suspect or arrested or charged in connection with his death.

Not surprisingly, since so much time has passed, a lot of the people involved in this case are dead.

Henry Kochan passed away in two thousand and eight in Missouri.

Rory Gregory, who wrote the letter, has passed away as well.

So it seems as though police did find elements of Rory's story credible enough to order an exhumation, but the bullet they found was unable to help them conclusively identify the murder weapon or to get any more definitive proof.

I wonder if there's any way to go back and find any sort of corroborating evidence.

I find myself wondering about the other leads, because so many appear to have been dropped, Like how the sheriff said the information regarding Joe Dobson should be investigated further, but then there's no evidence that it ever was.

Was there a relationship between Sally and Rex that went deeper than co workers?

There's nothing in the case file that indicates that there was.

But like so many other leads, there's a lot we don't know about why police haven't dug deeper.

I find myself wondering if there are other things missing from the case fault.

Is there someone else out there who knows something?

Could there be justice for Rex Terrell fifty years later?

I'm Catherine Townsend.

This is Helen Gone Murder Line.

Helen Gone Murder Line is a production of School of Humans and iHeart Podcasts.

It's written and narrated by me Catherine Townsend and produced by Gabby Watts.

Special thanks to Amy Tubbs for her research assistance and James Wheaton for legal review.

Noah camer mixed and scored this episode.

Our theme song is by Ben Salek, Executive producers of Virginia Prescott, Brandon Barr, and LC Crowley.

Listen to Helen Gone ad free by subscribing to the iHeart True Crime Plus channel on Apple Podcasts.

If you are interested in seeing documents and materials from the case, you can follow the show on Instagram at Helen Gone Potty.

If you have a case you'd like me and my team to look into, you can reach out to us at our Helen Gone Murder line at six seven eight seven four four six one four five.

That's six seven eight seven four four six one four five.

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