The Deck
Agustin Chacon (King of Clubs, Texas) & Marshall McCarthy (5 of Hearts, Texas)
Wed, 29 Jan 2025
Agustin Chacon, 25, and Marshall McCarthy, 37, were both shot to death in their homes in the same Odessa, Texas, neighborhood on the same winter night in 1982. While Marshall’s case nearly had too many leads for investigators to chase, Agustin’s hardly had any. A language barrier between police and Agustin’s roommates made things even harder. Now, more than 40 years later, one cold case detective is working through the different challenges in each case as she tries to solve both of these men’s murders. If you know anything at all about the murders of Agustin Chacon or Marshall McCarthy, or knew Agustin Chacon in Odessa in 1982, contact Detective Lauren Gonzales at 432-335-4926, or contact the Odessa Crime Stoppers if you want to remain anonymous, at (432) 333-8477.To listen to the episode we mentioned on Eula “Kay” Miller visit here.Please share this episode with anyone you know who lives in Odessa or may know someone who does. We have generated a transcript for this episode in Spanish as well as a digital flyer in the hopes of getting folks to come forward in Agustin's case which you can find here. View source material and photos for this episode at: thedeckpodcast.com/agustin-chacon-marshall-mccarthy Let us deal you in… follow The Deck on social media.Instagram: @thedeckpodcast | @audiochuckTwitter: @thedeckpodcast_ | @audiochuckFacebook: /TheDeckPodcast | /audiochuckllcTo support Season of Justice and learn more, please visit seasonofjustice.org. The Deck is hosted by Ashley Flowers. Instagram: @ashleyflowersTikTok: @ashleyflowerscrimejunkieTwitter: @Ash_FlowersFacebook: /AshleyFlowers.AF Text Ashley at 317-733-7485 to talk all things true crime, get behind the scenes updates, and more!
Full Episode
Our cards this week are Augustine Chacon, the King of Clubs from Texas, and Marshall McCarthy, the Five of Hearts from Texas. On the same evening in March 1982, in the same Odessa, Texas neighborhood, two men living very different lives were shot dead inside their homes just a half mile apart.
Though their paths may have never crossed in life, their deaths have been forever linked by proximity and the nearly 43-year pursuit of justice for them both. But as the Odessa detective on the case told us, Augustine's case grew cold because there were so few suspects, while Marshall's has never been solved because there are just too many. And that's where you can come in.
I'm Ashley Flowers, and this is The Deck. At around 9.30 p.m. on March 3rd, a man named Pedro was cooking in the kitchen of the cramped one-bedroom house in West Texas that he shared with a dozen other men who all seemed to be in town for work in the Odessa oil fields. The crowded quarters meant that the men had to take turns cooking.
And as Pedro prepared his own dinner, one of his many roommates, 25-year-old Augustine Chacon, joined him and began chopping potatoes. But the quiet of their ordinary night was shattered out of nowhere when the front door to the little one-story house swung open and a short man with a slight build appeared in the doorway.
His face was covered with some kind of orange fabric as he raised the gun he held in his right hand. Pedro thought that he saw another man standing behind him, but he couldn't be sure. And Pedro heard the gunman shout, don't move, in Spanish. And he watched as Augustine, still holding the kitchen knife, turned around and then gunshots rang out.
Everything suddenly went dark and someone had cut the lights. Pedro ran as a couple more gunshots were fired. He made it to the living room where some of the men slept and dove behind a bed for cover. He saw Augustine stagger from the kitchen to the bedroom and collapse on the floor.
In the chaotic aftermath of the shooting, one of the roommates turned the lights back on and someone managed to call police to report a person shot at 1319 East 4th Street. That call came into the Odessa Police Department at 9.37 p.m.
When first responders arrived at the house just minutes later, they found Augustine lying face up, bleeding from his chest and his right leg and fading in and out of consciousness. As medics got to work trying to save him, the responding officers assessed the scene. Such crowded housing setups were known as man camps.
They were a common arrangement for Odessa oil field workers who often came into town for only a few months and without their families. The lead investigator on this case, Detective Lauren Gonzalez, says that seems like what this house was. And most of the men living there had moved to town for work from Mexico or somewhere else in West Texas.
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