Our card this week is Debra Sue Moore, the Jack of Clubs from Texas. After a night out with a new love interest in May 1986, 25-year-old Debra Sue Moore was fatally stabbed steps outside her date’s apartment door. Police quickly zeroed in on her estranged husband as a suspect, but a string of attacks on several other women in the same area during the same week forced them to consider whether a serial predator could be to blame for Debra’s death.If you have any information about the death of Debra Sue Moore, please contact Detective Lauren Gonzales at 432-335-4926. You can also call Odessa Crimestoppers at 432-333-TIPS.Det. Gonzales is especially interested in hearing from anyone who may have seen Debra at The Brewery bar in Odessa on the evening of May 16, 1986. She believes the following people may have been there and hopes to speak with them: Larry Reimer, Connie Bean, Johnny Williams, Pat Ward, Lynn Stanford, Gina Wessels and Rhonda Crawford.If you or anyone you know is experiencing domestic violence, you can reach out to the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1-800-799-SAFE. Resources are available and can be found at this link.If you or someone you know has been sexually assaulted, help is available. You can reach the National Sexual Assault Hotline by chat or by phone at 1-800-656-HOPE. View source material and photos for this episode at: thedeckpodcast.com/debra-sue-moore 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 card this week is Deborah Sue Moore, the Jack of Clubs from Texas. When a young mother was stabbed to death outside an apartment complex in Odessa, Texas in the spring of 1986, police initially suspected her estranged husband could be behind the crime.
But when three other women were attacked in the same area that same week, investigators were forced to reconsider their theory and grapple with a bigger question. Did they have a serial predator on their hands? And that's a question that they are still asking to this very day. But perhaps with your help, they'll finally get an answer. I'm Ashley Flowers, and this is The Deck. Just before 3 a.m.
on May 17th, 1986, a woman's scream rang out in the Viva apartment complex in Odessa, Texas. Alarmed by the piercing sound of distress, a man named Dale ran out of his second floor unit and down a set of stairs into the open-air courtyard of the two-story building. And he noticed a trail of blood along the sidewalk leading to the door of apartment 51.
And as he knocked on the door, he heard a man cry out, "'Oh, my God!' When the door opened, Dale saw a woman soaked in blood lying motionless on the floor. The man who opened the door had already called police, and as he ran to the parking lot to flag down first responders, Dale started CPR on the unresponsive woman.
When police and paramedics arrived and began assessing the woman, the man who'd flagged them down told them that she was 25-year-old Deborah Sue Moore. They saw that Deborah had been stabbed at least once, and they weren't going to be able to care for her there, so they loaded her into an ambulance and rushed her to the local hospital.
But it wasn't long before official word came back that Deborah hadn't made it. By the time they got that news, detectives at the Viva Apartments were already kicked into high gear speaking with witnesses. First up, the occupant of apartment 51 and the man who'd called 911. And that's 23-year-old Charles Ezell.
In interviews that morning and a few days later, he told them Debra had come over to his apartment at around 8.15 p.m. on the 16th. They'd met up with another couple, and the four of them went on a double date to a bar called The Brewery. And Charles estimated that they'd all left the bar sometime between 12.30 and 1.30 in the morning.
Charles said that he and Debra had gone alone to eat at a Denny's before going back to his place at around 1.45 p.m. Here's Odessa Police Department's lead cold case detective, Lauren Gonzalez, who now is overseeing the case.
They had sex. Debra fell asleep, but woke up and told Charles she'd had a nightmare about the time her grandmother died in her arms. Sometime afterward, she put on his robe and walked out into the living room. And he said he figured she was maybe going to go use the bathroom, but he fell asleep. And he woke up because he heard her screaming his name, Charles.
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