Brush Girl: The Murder of April Dawn Lacy

Gone Cold - Texas True Crime

Vincent Strange

True Crime, Society & Culture, News

4.6 • 1.8K Ratings

🗓️ 6 October 2025

⏱️ 31 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In October 1996, a rancher in rural Wise County, Texas, stumbled on a body hidden in a brush pile. For over two years she was known only as “Brush Girl,” a Jane Doe with no name, no identity, and no justice. Eventually, persistence and forensic artistry revealed her true identity: 14-year-old April Dawn Lacy from Oklahoma City.

April’s story is one of poverty, addiction, instability, and systemic failure — a child caught between parents lost to alcohol and drugs, shuffled between motels and friends’ homes, desperate for stability. Five days after storming out of a seedy motel room following a fight with her mother, she was dead. Strangled. Dumped. Forgotten by many, but not by all.

This episode follows April’s life, disappearance, discovery, and identification, and examines how her murder fits into a chilling pattern of killings along interstates in Texas and Oklahoma — crimes later tied to long-haul truckers like John Robert Williams, the so-called “Big Rig Killer.”

Nearly three decades later, April’s grave still bears no headstone. Her case remains unsolved. But her story is more than a case number — it is a call for justice, and a reminder of the children who slip through the cracks.

If you have any information regarding the 1996 murder of April Dawn Lacy, please contact the Wise County Sheriff’s Office at (940) 627-5971.

Sources: The Fort Worth Star-Telegram, The Houston Chronicle, The Daily Oklahoman, The Bryan-College Station Eagle, The Tyler Morning Telegraph

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Gone Cold Podcasts may contain violent or graphic subject matter. Listener discretion is advised.
0:09.1	October 8, 1996, Wise County, Texas. A rancher near the small community of Slidell walked out to check his land.
0:19.8	Dove season meant hunters had left beer cans, spent shotgun shells, and trash scattered around the brush piles.
0:28.5	At first glance, the heap of dead cedar and mesquite branches looked ordinary, just another spot where refuse had been dumped.
0:41.2	But something pale caught his eye, something out of place. He stepped closer. It was the body of a girl. She had no identification, no clothing, no name.
0:51.3	In the reports that followed, investigators would call her brush girl. For more than two
0:57.0	years, that's all she was, a Jane Doe, a case number in a filing cabinet, until persistence,
1:04.4	forensic artistry, and a match in dental records revealed the truth. She was April Dawn Lacey, just 14 years old,
1:13.4	and whoever strangled her and left her in a pile of brush has never been brought to justice.
1:52.6	Music April Don Lacey was born in 1982 in a suburb of Oklahoma City and into a family already marked by instability.
2:00.7	Her father, Dale, struggled with alcoholism and spent time in jail. He was absent for much of her life.
2:07.9	April's mother, Jacqueline, battled a crack cocaine addiction. She admitted openly that she supported her habit through sex work. Whether or not Jacqueline forced her daughter into prostitution
2:13.9	is disputed. She later said in an interview from prison that, while she admitted to
2:20.3	performing sex for money herself, April was never present and never took part. But even investigators
2:27.2	had their doubts. Wise County Sheriff's Captain David Walker later told the Fort Worth Star Telegram
2:34.1	that Jacqueline was involved
2:35.8	in prostitution and drugs heavily, and from what the department had learned, April was as well.
2:43.1	What is certain is that April grew up surrounded by addiction, poverty, and transients.
2:49.7	Neighbors remembered her scavenging, collecting cans to help support her family.
2:55.2	Friends recalled being told she was made to shoplift at her mother's direction.
3:00.7	One story stands out.
3:02.7	Her mother allegedly told her to steal a chicken from Walmart, reasoning that if April was caught,
	...

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