Gone Cold Podcasts may contain violent or graphic subject matter. Listener discretion is advised.

A white jaguar sat in the parking lot of the Hilton Hotel at 6,000 Middle Fiskville Road, just north of downtown Austin.

For two days, no one thought much of it. Guests came and went. Suitcases rolled

across cracked asphalt, while traffic on the interstate hummed in the background.

Austin in the late 1980s was a city caught between two worlds, recovering from the oil bust that had drained Texas

through the early part of the decade, while not so quietly paving the groundwork for the eventual,

unofficial, city slogan, Keep Austin Weird. It was a place of contrasts, part quirky college

town, part rising capital city. Sixth Street

pulsed with live music and neon. South Congress was still rough around the edges. Downtown was a

mix of bankers, politicians, students, and musicians trying to make rent. The Hilton Inn at Highland Mall had been one of the

city's crown jewels when it opened in 1975. With 332 rooms, it stood out as a modern landmark

where traveling executives and celebrities checked in when they came through town. By 1988, however,

the glamour had faded. The hotel had been sold, and that April it was facing foreclosure

over a $25 million loan default. Guests were mostly business travelers, truckers, and families passing through.

It was in that same parking lot, beneath that same faded glow, that a hotel guest finally noticed

the white jaguar parked too long in one space. When police opened the trunk, they found a woman

wrapped in a rose-colored comforter,

still wearing a light pink terry cloth robe.

Her wrists and ankles were bound with duct tape.

She had been blindfolded, gagged, and shot through the back of the head.

The woman in the trunk was identified as 45-year-old Betty Ann Thomas. Elizabeth Ann Hedrick, better known as Betty, was born on June 4, 1942 in Coldwater, Kansas,

to William and Mildred Hedrick. She was the 13th of 16 children, six brothers and nine sisters,

...