The Murder of Sharon McLane Part Three: The Wrong Man
Gone Cold - Texas True Crime
Vincent Strange
4.4 • 1.9K Ratings
🗓️ 1 June 2026
⏱️ 34 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
But questions never completely disappeared.
Years after Nolley’s conviction, attorneys with the Innocence Project and Tarrant County’s Conviction Integrity Unit uncovered troubling problems with the original prosecution, including undisclosed evidence, unreliable jailhouse informant testimony, and forensic findings that cast doubt on the verdict.
Early in the case, Paul Dennis Reid, a violent serial killer later convicted of seven murders in Tennessee and suspected in several others, emerged as an alternate suspect. But police discounted him despite many witnesses placing him at Sharon’s apartment complex around the time of the murder, among other things.
In the final chapter of Sharon McLane’s story, we examine Reid’s murder convictions, the evidence that pointed away from Nolley, and the extraordinary review that ultimately led to Nolley’s release after nearly two decades behind bars.
While John Earl Nolley eventually regained his freedom, Sharon McLane’s murder remains unsolved, leaving behind one lingering question that has never been definitively answered:
Who killed Sharon McLane?
Part three of three.
If you have any information about the murder of Sharon Lucretia McLane, please call the Bedford police at (817) 952-2127.
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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. |
| 0:08.6 | On the evening of December 11, 1996, 32-year-old Sharon McLean finished her shift at Advantage |
| 0:16.7 | Rinnacar and returned to her apartment in Bedford, Texas. At about 11 p.m., she spoke on the phone with |
| 0:24.6 | a man she was dating in Salt Lake City, Utah. He described Sharon's mood as good. Nothing seemed |
| 0:32.0 | unusual, and nothing suggested that her life was in any danger at all. |
| 0:43.3 | But sometime in the following 12 hours or so, someone entered Sharon's apartment. |
| 0:46.3 | And what happened next was violent. |
| 0:50.7 | She was stabbed and slashed at least 57 times. |
| 0:57.4 | Detectives later found a bloody partial palm print beneath her body alongside three knives. Witnesses reported hearing screams so disturbing that years later they still remembered |
| 1:04.3 | them. The investigation quickly began moving in conflicting directions. There was the mysterious stranger, a white guy in a cowboy hat. |
| 1:15.4 | The married couple who had heard the screams saw him near Sharon's apartment, |
| 1:20.6 | possibly leaving, about 30 minutes after. |
| 1:23.9 | A maintenance worker also saw him. |
| 1:26.8 | Detectives developed a composite sketch and focused heavily on identifying him. |
| 1:32.8 | Then there was Sharon's friend, John Earl Noli. |
| 1:36.9 | He had been in her apartment that night, a fact he kept from police at first. |
| 1:42.9 | When he finally admitted he'd been there, Noly explained to |
| 1:46.8 | detectives that he was on probation, and, since he'd gone to Sharon's place to sell her pot, |
| 1:52.8 | he didn't want to say he was there. He and Sharon had drank a couple beers and shared a joint, |
| 1:58.9 | he said. That hesitation to tell the truth would become |
| 2:03.0 | one of the things used against him. In 1998, a Tarrant County jury convicted John Earl Noli |
| 2:10.8 | of Sharon McLean's murder and sentenced him to life in prison. The case appeared closed. But as the investigation into Sharon's |
... |
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