Twenty-eight-year-old Carolyn Montgomery lived in North Dallas, Texas with her son Dequin, who was six years old in 1971. She shared a flat in the Sherwood Forest Apartments complex with another female roommate, who also worked at the same upscale nightclub where Carolyn was employed as a cocktail waitress.
After a long shift, Carolyn came home very early on the morning of Sunday, August 8th and sat down to relax. Dequin was in his room asleep, and Carolyn’s roommate had gone out. But at some point shortly after Carolyn arrived home from work, a ruthless killer would enter the residence and snatch the young woman’s life away for reasons which have never been deciphered.
The following morning, Dequin awoke as normal and went out into the living room, not thinking anything at all was unusual. He saw his mother lying on the floor, covered with a blanket, and though he thought it was a little strange, he simply assumed his mother was sleeping, and he went outside to play in the yard.
A little while later, Dequin came back inside the house and noticed that his mother had not moved. Uneasy, he then went to a neighbor’s apartment to ask for help. When the neighbor entered the Montgomery residence, however, she screamed and gathered Dequin up in her arms before running back to her own apartment to summon the police.
When officers arrived, they lifted the blanket that was covering Carolyn Montgomery and discovered that the woman had been stabbed multiple times and mutilated with a series of kitchen knives, two of which were still protruding from her throat and her abdomen. The violence of the crime, detectives believed, suggested that the motive was personal.
However, as the authorities searched the apartment for clues, they came across a haunting message that had been scrawled onto the back of a picture frame and left where someone would be sure to see it. The message read, “The wrong one—I’m sorry.”
Using this disturbing piece of evidence, investigators formulated a theory that the assailant had actually been targeting Carolyn’s roommate, who was also a cocktail waitress at the same nightclub and had not been home at the time of the murder. As promising as this proposition seemed, though, it ultimately led nowhere, and the inquiry was soon back to square one.
Authorities also attempted to link the murder of Carolyn Montgomery with two other Dallas-area homicides with similar details: that of nineteen-year-old Janette Starnes Smith in January of 1970, and that of twenty-two-year-old Barbara Joan Moorman from March of 1971. Both women had been stabbed, and Janette Smith’s body had been found with a knife embedded in her chest. It does not appear that any compelling leads were developed from this angle either, however.
The meaning of the bizarre message left at the scene remains unknown, and in the years following the murder, much of the case evidence has become woefully contaminated. The person who entered Carolyn Montgomery’s apartment in the summer of 1971 and hacked her to death while her six-year-old son slept in the next room has never been identified.
Crime Immemorial 