Unsolved cases to go to retired cop squad
Williamson County sheriff aims to solve Cooke case, others.
Janet Cooke lives each day with a long list of unanswered questions that have lingered for 15 years about the disappearance of her daughter.
“I get up with it, I go to bed with it, I even dream about it,” she said with tears in her eyes. “It has changed my entire life.”
Her daughter, Rachel, went for a midmorning run in their Williamson County neighborhood while home from college on Christmas break. She vanished and has never been seen or heard from again.
Williamson County Sheriff Robert Chody wants to help answer what happened, and to bring a possible kidnapper or killer to justice.
Four months after taking office, he is assembling a new investigative team he hopes will help solve the county’s most well-known missing persons case — and that of about 10 unsolved murders in Williamson County.
The crimes date to 1979, when deputies found a still-unidentified victim in what they call the
orange socks case, and to the 1988 murder of laundromat owner S.E. Richey, who was attacked in his driveway near the community of Shiloh in what investigators think was a robbery.
In a unique approach, Chody is soliciting help from retired investigators with experience investigating homicides and other major crimes from across Central Texas to voluntarily work on the cases. Chody thinks their range of experience with federal, state and
local law enforcement agencies could help them see evidence differently than previous detectives or that they
might spot something that previous investigators possibly missed. “We have families out t here who don’t have answers, and they deserve some type of answer that allows them to believe we haven’t given up,” Chody told the American-Statesman and KVUE-TV. “That’s what I’m trying to do.”
In exchange for retirees volunteering to help, Chody will provide the signature they need to maintain their state police officer licenses. To keep that certification, they must be working in law enforcement.
Finding fresh eyes
It isn’t unusual for retired law enforcement officers to serve as reservists. However, they most frequently do so helping patrol streets —
not looking for new clues in high-profile or cold cases. But Chody, who said he hopes to create a team of about a dozen, said he sees an opportunity to draw from their investigative experience,
and he said the arrangement allows full-time investigators to focus on ongoing criminal cases.
“It gets new eyes on these cases that have had the eyes of detectives who are already overworked,” Chody said. “We are trying to prioritize with the resources we have.”
Chody said Cooke’s case will be among the team’s highest priorities, but the team will also pursue several other cases, including:
The 1999 murder of Sonya Wallace, who was found bludgeoned to death in an eastern Williamson County drainage ditch. She
left her home to take a letter to the post office four blocks away before her body was found about a month later.
The 1985 disappearance of Althea Rogers, who was 35 years old when she vanished. She was last seen hitchhiking near Georgetown, and police suspect foul play.
Trying to learn the identities of two sets of skeletal remains, one from 1988 and the other from 1989, and who killed those victims.
2016 discovery didn’t pan out
Multiple investigators throughout the years have tried to figure out what happened to Cooke, leading to multiple theories: That she knew the person who kidnapped her. That it was a stranger. A sexual assault. But none has ever come
close to declaring the case solved.
Cooke, a student at Mesa Junior College in Southern California, was home on winter break when she went jogging alone Jan. 10, 2002, in her parents’ neighborhood in the North Lake subdivi
sion northwest of Georgetown. Several people saw her running because there were construction crews in the neighborhood, traffic, one other jogger and a retired couple out walking.
She was wear i ng gray sweat pants, a lime green sports bra and Asics sneakers. She also had two heartshaped cherries tattooed on her left shoulder and a black star tattooed on her left foot near her little toe.
The last person to see her was a neighbor, who saw Cooke walking to cool down at the end of her run around 10:30 or 11 a.m. on Neches Trail.
Last year, Williamson County officials told the Statesman that they had found “a large amount of new material” that they sent to the Texas Department of Public Safety for testing. Offi- cials have declined to iden- tify the evidence, but Chody said it didn’t test positive for
helping with the case. At her home just outside Georgetown, Janet Cooke remains hopeful that, some day, she will know what happened to her daughter.
“My heart wants to say yes, that we will get resolution,” she said. “But I know that should I not find it on this Earth, I will find it. The good Lord is going to let me know.”
In exchange for retirees volunteering to help, Chody will provide the signature they need to maintain their state police officer licenses.