The Slaying of Eula “Kay” Miller

Gone Cold - Texas True Crime

Vincent Strange

True Crime

4.6 • 1.8K Ratings

🗓️ 12 January 2026

⏱️ 32 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In July 1970, the body of 26-year-old Eula Mae “Kay” Miller was discovered inside her apartment at the Hilltop Apartments in Odessa, Texas. What initially appeared quiet and undisturbed soon revealed a brutal killing, one that had gone unnoticed for days in the sweltering West Texas heat. As investigators worked backward through a shrinking window of time, they were confronted with a case already eroded by delay, decomposition, and the transient nature of a booming oilfield city.

Kay Miller was known publicly as a friendly, outgoing go-go dancer at a local club, but behind that image was a woman carrying a far more complicated life: a separated wife, a mother of four, and someone who kept her past carefully guarded. With no signs of forced entry, no murder weapon, and no clear motive, detectives were left with a maze of acquaintances, shifting witness memories, and evidence that refused to speak clearly. Despite interviewing more than 150 people and chasing countless leads, including rumors of a serial killer operating in the area, Kay’s murder remained stubbornly resistant to resolution.

More than fifty years later, the slaying of Eula “Kay” Miller remains unsolved. No arrests were ever made, and no definitive answers emerged. What’s left is a portrait of a woman whose trust may have cost her life, and a haunting reminder of how easily violence can hide in plain sight during times of rapid growth and distraction.

If you have any information about the murder of Eula Mae “Kay” Miller, please contact the Odessa Police Department Cold Case Division at (432) 335-4926.

Sources: The Odessa American, The Midland Reporter-Telegram, The Austin American-Statesman, and yourbasin.com

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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.
0:10.2	By 1970, Odessa, Texas was a city shaped by oil, booming fast, growing unevenly, and straining under the weight of its own success.
0:22.4	The population surge of the previous two decades had transformed a once small West Texas town
0:29.7	into a transient, male-dominated boomtown where shift work, bars, and temporary housing were woven into daily life.
0:40.6	Law enforcement struggled to keep pace with the growth, and the rhythms of the oil field
0:46.3	often pulled attention away from what was happening behind closed doors.
0:51.9	Less than two years before, a young mother named Linda Lee Cougat disappeared.
0:57.8	Her body found a couple months later in a scrubby field of mesquite northwest of town. A stocking
1:04.6	nodded tightly around her neck. Fear spread quietly. People locked doors earlier, watched strangers more closely, and began to sense that Odessa's rapid rise had come with a darker underside. But as time passed, and even though the killer remained unknown, those safety precautions loosened as the boogeyman started to seem
1:30.5	more like a myth than reality. It would take years and additional violence before the full scope
1:37.8	of what had been happening in and around Odessa during that period began to come into focus.
1:45.0	In 1970, the city learned that the oil boom had not insulated it from brutality,
1:51.4	but had instead, perhaps, helped hide it in plain sight.
1:56.1	That year, what would ultimately become a string of violent crimes that had begun with Linda Cougat's murder,
2:03.3	continued when the body of Kay Miller was discovered.
2:44.3	Music On Thursday, July 16th, 1970, at the Hilltop Apartments near East 8th Street and Dixie in Odessa, something was terribly wrong.
2:47.1	It wasn't immediately visible.
2:53.7	There were no screams, no broken glass, no police cars screaming into the complex.
3:02.7	Instead, it was something quieter, flies. They gathered near the window of apartment L1,
3:10.5	thick and persistent, drawn by something no one wanted to think about. Along with them came a smell,
3:19.2	heavy, unmistakable, and growing worse by the day. A resident named Brenda O'Neill noticed it first. She hadn't seen her friend, who lived in that apartment, in several days.
3:25.6	That alone was concerning, but maybe a sort of denial was even stronger.
	...

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