Upper-Scale Town
The upper-class neighborhood of Fort Worth – located in the suburbs of Colleyville, Texas – is practically one of the safest places in the US. So much so, that as of 2017, there hadn't been a murder in over 20 years.
"It's a small bedroom community of Dallas-Fort Worth, a very affluent community, very low crime rate", explained Colleyville Police Detective Kevin Maddux. Nobody imagined that it would become known for one of the most brutal crimes in recent history...
A Soft-Hearted Woman
The victim was a 72-year-old housekeeper named Anita Fox. She was a devout Christian and a devoted mother to her youngest son, Al. "Mom was energetic, loved life, always had people on her mind, loved her grandchildren", Al shared.
"The last time that I saw mom would have been the night before. She walked through the door and hugged the kids and she set and visited with me. And she kissed all the kids, and then she came back a second time and kissed them all again", All painfully recalls. But why was this soft-hearted woman victim of such a brutal crime?
Everyone Was Shook
The following morning, just like every other day, Anita loaded her car with cleaning supplies and drove off to the 4,000-square-foot home where she worked as a housekeeper.
Safety was never an issue for Anita, as she worked in one of the poshest neighborhoods in the whole town. Bearing this in mind, the whole city was left in shock when Anita's corpse was found...
Trail Of Blood
The groundskeeper discovered Anita's bodyg around noon. The crime scene revealed a horrifying murder, as there were puddles of blood all over the place: from the closet to the door, from the kitchen to the hallway.
Anita had been stabbed once in the chest, once in the back, and between 10 to 12 times in the head. Then, her killer(s) had dragged her all the way to the entrance hall, leaving an endless trail of blood all over the house. But who who had killed her and why?
Promising Lead
Considering how brutal the crime had been, Det. Maddux ruled out the possibility of a robbery. "It was obvious that she had been targeted for some reason", he concluded. But while there wasn't any major evidence at the crime scene, the groundskeeper provided a promising lead.
"I saw a white guy walking from this house. It was a fat guy", the groundskeeper told the 911 operator moments after finding the body. According to her statement, he had short, gray hair, he had a stern expression on his face, and he drove a pickup truck with a ladder rack. But this was not all...
Mysterious Stranger
The groundskeeper also pointed out that the stranger had stared at her from the sidewalk. "He looked back over his shoulder at one point, looked back in her direction", Maddux explained.
That quick glance was enough for the police sketch artist to pull off a composite drawing. But this mysterious man wasn't the police's only lead. It turns out that Anita's son, Al, was also among the list of suspects...
Suspects Cleared
Det. Maddux brought Anita's son in for interrogation and took a DNA swab. Not only did he deny any connection to the murder, but the test results didn't match the blood found on the crime scene either.
After a second interrogation, Al was conclusively ruled out as a suspect. As the police eliminated other possible suspects – including Anita's former employees – they eventually focused exclusively on the person who seemed to be the killer: the fat man in a pickup truck.
He Rang A Bell
Everything changed from the moment the police showed Anita's son, Al, the composite drawing of the mysterious fat guy. The man depicted in the sketch rang a bell. "It looks like the guy at the gas station", Al claimed.
As Al looked back, he remembered he had caught a plump guy and another man staring at him from their pickup truck just a few days before the murder. "That night on the job site I saw that truck watching me and I thought they were just common thieves", he narrated. A few days later, he saw this...
Champagne-Colored Pickup Truck
Even though Al had a hunch that those two men were there to steal his equipment, he decided to let it pass. However, a few days after that incident, he drove to Big Willy's gas station and came across the exact same champagne-colored truck parked in the lot.
"I pulled in and was putting fuel in my truck and something just downloaded in my mind: 'Snap that picture,' and so I knocked on the window and told my wife 'Snapshot that truck'", he told Crime Watch Daily. When Al e-mailed the picture to the detective, they made a startling discovery...
Jigsaw Falling Into Place
After thoroughly analyzing the picture Al's wife had taken, the detectives realized that the pickup truck with the ladder rack looked just like the one the groundskeeper had seen. Little by little, the jigsaw was falling into place.
Even though the license place wasn't legible, it was still a promising lead. While a team of police technicians struggled on enhancing the numbers, a detective paid a visit to Anita's pastor and landed on another crucial clue...
Secret Identity
After interviewing Anita's pastor, Det. Maddux learned some surprising facts about Anita. It happens to be that she was an English Traveller, which is another word for gypsy. The gypsies are a secretive community that live a nomadic lifestyle.
"They typically travel for work, they'll move up north during the summer months, and then move back south to Texas and the warmer climates during the winter months", Maddux explained. But in what way was this relevant?
Million-Dollar Life Insurance
Within the gypsy community, there are many dark rumors as to how some of its members make money: allegedly, many of them take on life insurance policies on each other. In other words, friends or family members buy a policy on one of their relatives, hoping to cash in some day.
"In the Traveller community, they look at them as investments or a savings account for the family", Maddux explained. After looking into it, Maddux discovered that there was a whopping $5 million life insurance on a 70-year-old cleaning lady. Guess who she was?
Connecting The Dots
That's right: there happened to be a $5-million life insurance on Anita Fox. However, the craziest part was that – according to Al – Anita had never even known about this! From this moment onwards, the detectives started suspecting that the motive behind Anita's murder had been her insurance.
The case grew even more intriguing once Det. Maddux interviewed Anita's son-in-law, Mark Buckland. At first, Mark claimed that there wasn't any life insurance policy on Anita. However, a few days later, he changed his story, eventually shedding light on a dodgy world of insurance scams...
Twisted World Of Insurance Frauds
The police department started working alongside the Texas Department of Insurance, and after doing some research, they identified a millionaire policy that had been transferred ownership. As soon as this irregularity came to light, Buckland ended up confessing the truth.
It happens to be that Buckland could no longer afford her mother-in-law's $2,800 monthly insurance fee, so he secretly transfered her policy to another Traveller named Patrick Gorman. This transaction, however, was carried out behind Anita's back. But who was Patrick?
The Mystery Begins To Unravel
Patrick was another member of the Gypsy community, except that Anita had never met him before. Upon investigating his background, the police realized that Patrick's brother, Gerard, aka Fat Joe, looked an awful lot like the suspect featured in the composite drawing!
Hoping to get to the bottom of this, Det. Maddux interviewed Charles Mercier, the insurance agent who had transferred the policy. They soon found out that he specialized in selling life insurance to gypsies. When interviewed by the police, he confessed that Fat Joe would constantly phone him asking for Anita's address. Coincidence?
Where's Fat Joe?
All of the clues suggested that Fat Joe was the mystery killer. The way they saw it, he had probably grown way too anxious at the thought of such a hefty payout. The next logical step was to locate him, and digitally enhancing the image of his license plate would certainly help to do so.
"I could make out the last portion of it but I couldn't make out the first characters. Sergeant Pruitt finally was able to enhance the image enough we could read the entire license plate, and it was registered to Joe Gorman", Det. Maddux told. But who was Joe? Was he related to Patrick "Fat Joe" Gorman?
Little Joe On The Lookout
As it turned out, Joe Gorman was Bernard "Little Joe" Gorman's son. The cops quickly located Little Joe and brought him in for interrogation. The young man confessed that on the night of the murder, he had driven his dad to the murder house to carry out a paint job and parked outside.
According to Little Joe, he knew nothing about his father's gruesome plot. Therefore, he was shocked when he saw his father racing back to the truck with his right arm covered in blood. "I asked him later on what happened, and he said that he punched a wall or something", Little Joe told the police. Was he telling the truth?
The Suspect Caved
Little Joe denied any sort of involvement or complicity with the murder, but nce he was faced with the facts, he finally caved, confessing that his father had been stalking Anita Fox for quite a while.
"He would finally admit to little pieces at a time, and he finally tells us that he and his father drove up from Houston, his father followed Anita Fox around for several days in the Cleburne-Joshua area where Helen and Al had seen him in the pickup truck", Maddux told Crime Watch Daily. Fat Joe's days were numbered...
Unexpected Death
A couple of days later, the police finally managed to track down down Fat Joe, who had been staying at a motel near Houston for the past days. However, everyone was left in shock once they knocked down the door.
When the police entered the room, they discovered Fat Joe's dead body lying on the bed. Apparently, the man had suffered a heart attack the day before. But what happened then?
Justice Was Made
Even though the main suspect was dead, the case continued its course and Little Joe was charged with conspiracy to murder for having driven the truck.
In the end, Little Joe pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 14 years in jail. "I'm here to welcome you to your hell", Al Fox screamed at him in court. Once and for all, justice for soft-hearted Anita Fox was made. But what happened with Anita's money?
Silver Lining
Even though justice was made, the battle over Anita's insurance money is still not over. To this day, Al and his sister are in the middle of a lawsuit to determine who are the rightful heirs to that $5-million fortune.
But let's take a look at the bright side: if it hadn't been for Al's wife's picture, the police would never have landed on the perpetrators of such a ruthless crime.