B (3:52)
Yeah, thanks. So my sources for this one are KE TV and abc, as well as the Houston Post, the Houston Chronicle, Marshall News messenger, and the Odessa American as accessed by Newspapers.com. this case is out of Texas. This is one of those cases. I don't know if any of you guys are like me, but like, you ever have those cases where you, you know a fair amount about them. You don't necessarily like, they're always kind of in the periphery. You, you think about them, they're really horrifying and you hope they get solved. Those unsolved cases, you're maybe not like all familiar with the ins and outs, but you maybe have encountered it a couple times watching different programs or reading old news articles and whatnot, and you're just like, man, I hope that one gets solved. This is one for me. This is one of those cases where I was kind of vaguely aware of it and always kind of would check in on it, maybe occasionally be like, did anything happen where it's, you know, getting solved. So the case I'm talking about are the murders of Cheryl Henry and Garland Andrew, known as Andy Atkinson out of Houston, Texas. This is a particularly sick and heinous case. And I think that's why it's stuck in my mind because it's just like disgusts me that there are people out there like this, doing this to people, and you want it to get solved. But there's been a big development in this case recently. Like huge. So let's talk about the case itself. And just so you know, I've seen it reported that both Cheryl and Andy were 22 years old. I've also seen that Andy was 21 years result. I don't know what's accurate. I've just seen it both ways in the news articles that I read. So I apologize. But this case goes back to August of 1990. So Cheryl Henry and Andy Atkinson were a young couple. Atkinson or Andy was at. In Houston for a summer vacation visiting his. He was raised by his Grandparents by his grandmother in North Carolina. He was in a senior year at Campbell University in North Carolina, but he was going to Houston and he started dating Cheryl Henry. They were dating for about three weeks. By all accounts, they were getting along super well. Things were going really well. They were really head over heels for one another. Cheryl was telling people that he was the man she was going to marry. And they went out in this kind of young relationship out for a night of fun. So a little bit of more background on these two young people. Henry was a graduate of the Lee high school in 1986, went to Kilgore Junior Colle for a year, and then also studied at the Stephen F. Austin University. And a little more background into kind of their. Their work. Andy worked at Gold's Gym and they also. It sounds like Cheryl did some work at a club called Rick's Cabaret, kind of as an exotic dancer, while Andy kind of worked the door at a club owned by his dad, Dream Street. And, you know, so they kind of had that. They were doing that. They both had that in common. But they were getting along great. And, you know, they were just going on a date that night. So they went to the Bayou Mama, which was a nightclub. And they were last seen on, I think it was August. They. They went out on a double date with Cheryl's sister and her boyfriend on August 21, 1990. Party into the evening, August 22, 1990. The sisters and their dates say goodbye to each other and they leave. And then, unfortunately, Cheryl and Andy never made it back home from there. They're missing. And so something has happened. Meanwhile, on, I believe it was August. Let's see, August 23rd, a security guard for Cisco Food Security is doing his rounds. And he's on the west side of Houston, the far west side. It's kind of an undeveloped area at that time, at least. And there's. He's on the 1300 block of Enclave Road where he sees an abandoned vehicle. And he notices it. I think he sees it around 5pm he's like, okay, that's there. Three hours later, he comes back and sees it once again. So it hasn't moved. That's where a security guard's gonna start saying, okay, I'm a little bit concerned about this. So police bring in their cadaver dog. They're responding to this. They notice a couple of pretty concerning things. The car is apparently bloodied and there are articles of clothing spread around outside of it. The back window is all. There's also a window that's smashed in the Car. And so, okay, something bad may have happened. They find a woman's shoes and purse on the front floorboard. The seats are reclined back. It looks like a couple went out there to like make out or neck or whatever you want to call it because it's a notable lover's lane area. But they were interrupted and something bad happened. And unfortunately, something bad did happen. A search of the area confirmed that a horrible murder had taken place. Cheryl was found in a wooded area lying with her hands tied behind her back with hemp rope and her throat had been slashed three times. There had been a, quote, feeble attempt to cover her with rotting cedar boards, seemingly taking from a nearby fence. So she had been horribly murdered. She was also naked. And investigators later learned that she had been raped. So that's what happened. But they cannot find Andy. So the search continues. This is something that will, you know, kind of a point of controversy within a case. We are known for covering the Delphi murders case, but police actually called off the search for this one. They called off the search at a certain point in the night. They left a police officer to guard the scene, essentially J.J. wilson. That was officer J.J. wilson with the Houston Police Department. He remained on scene throughout the night. When the sun rose and it started getting light out, he resumed his search. And he found unfortunately, the body of Andy at 9am and his throat had been severed so severely that his head was nearly severed. So he, like Cheryl, had his hands bound, bound behind his back with hemp rope. And they said they weren't as tight or maybe like he was in the process of getting out, it's not clear. And he was leaning up against a nearby tree. So they were, I think about like 200 and 100 yards from the car. They weren't very far. But it, it seemed like someone had, you know, led, tied them up, led them away and then slit both their throats and also raped Cheryl. So just a horrible, horrible case. It seems like police pretty quickly were like, yeah, we don't necessarily think this was like, we think someone may have been targeting a couple that they didn't necessarily know these people and they just got unlucky and happened to run into the wrong monster that night. But they start getting tips, they hear from like 30 people who hurt, may have heard or seen something weird around that area around that night. At one point they were looking at a possible connection with a 30 year, 36 year old woman who had been murdered in her apartment in west Houston, Adelia Amador. But there was no link to that that they could find. They start offering rewards over the years. 5,000, I've seen 10,000, 50,000. Like they're trying to put out different things for people to kind of come and call in and say, what's going on. Some people speculated that it may have been related to one of their work at some of these clubs because there was actually then. And also, like, I mean, it's just a creepy scene when you, when you read about it. Like there were like deflated balloons over one of the trees near one of the bodies. It's just all very creepy and horrible. I mean, this was extremely painful for their families who survived them. So in terms of developments, a big one happened in, I believe it was 2000, where. So there was a letter that came into police postmarked March 1, 2001, and it said in block letters, if you want to know who killed C. Henry and A. Atkinson, it will cost a hundred thousand dollars. And then it told them to Reply in the March 12, 2001, Houston Chronicle edition and quote, a lawyer will be hired to make sure you play straight. So the police played along with this. I mean, I think they were probably hoping for almost like a situation like Dennis Raider, the buffoonish serial killer who got caught because police told him they couldn't track him via floppy disk. He was a serial murderer in Wichita, Kansas and Park City, Kansas, and he got busted in the stupidest way possible. What happened with him was. And he was known as btk, but I prefer to call him by his real name because why give him any
