Shallow Grave: The Slaying of Helen Dawn Williams

Gone Cold - Texas True Crime

Vincent Strange

True Crime, Society & Culture, News

4.6 • 1.8K Ratings

🗓️ 8 August 2023

⏱️ 30 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In October 1993, Thurgood Marshall School of Law student Dawn Williams vanished without so much as a trace. Fellow students, friends, and family searched everywhere but no clues were found. Houston Police, too, failed to find anything at all. The following month, a crew cleaning trash from an area in rural Montgomery County found the 25-year-old women’s body buried in a shallow grave, partially unearthed by animals. Police, and especially Dawn’s father, had a good idea what happened to her and who did it, but evidence has eluded investigators for 30 years. This re-recorded episode features updated information previously unavailable.

If you have any information about the murder of Helen Dawn Williams, please call HPD’s Cold Case Unit at 713-308-3618 or to remain anonymous and collect a reward, contact Crime Stoppers of Houston at 713-222-8477

Please consider donating to the go fund me for Leon Laureles. You can find it at: gofundme.com/f/leon-laureles-private-detective-and-memorial

You can support gone cold and listen ad-free at patreon.com/gonecoldpodcast Find us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram by using @gonecoldpodcast and on YouTube at: youtube.com/c/gonecoldpodcast

The Houston Chronicle, KHOU Houston, Blackpast.org, The Texas Observer, and the Houston press were used as sources for this episode

#JusticeForHelenDawnWilliams #Houston #HoustonTX #ThirdWard #HarrisCountyTX #Texas #TX #TexasTrueCrime #GoneCold #GoneColdPodcast #ColdCase #Unsolved #Murder #UnsolvedMurder #Homicide #UnsolvedMysteries #TrueCrime #TrueCrimePodcast #Podcast

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Transcript

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0:00.0	The Gone Cold Podcast may contain violent or graphic subject matter, listener discretion
0:06.9	is advised.
0:10.4	Houston's historic Third Ward, also known by its nickname, The Trey, has as rich, important
0:17.6	and tragic a history as any other Texas community.
0:23.0	While precise boundaries of the Third Ward are not easy to nail down, the area is usually
0:29.4	defined by a starting point at Congress and Maine, downtown, and then stretching Miles
0:36.6	South and South East at an near 45 degree angle.
0:41.9	The boundaries have changed over time anyway, as has the Third Ward's demographics and
0:48.0	power as a cultural epicenter.
0:51.6	Though the Trey's population was almost evenly split between blacks and whites when the
0:57.5	wards were created upon Houston's incorporation, by the end of the mid 19th century, whites
1:04.7	began leaving for suburban developments.
1:08.6	The Third Ward became mostly black, and locally owned and operated businesses there grew and
1:15.4	thrived.
1:16.9	At Dowling Street, especially, the center of the Third Ward's business hub.
1:22.9	The area quickly became an important part of the black community and culture in the following
1:28.0	years, and not just for Houstonians.
1:32.3	Black men and women from all over Southeast Texas came to indulge in the Third Ward's
1:38.2	nightlife, a place where their culture was prevalent and celebrated.
1:44.2	In 1939, when it opened, Blues and Jazz at the El Dorado Ballroom provided patrons with
1:50.9	respite, if only briefly, from the Jim Crow laws that dominated the surrounding areas
1:56.6	of the city and Houston's outlying small towns.
	...

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