On May 6, 1991, in Fort Worth, Texas, 79-year-old Hattie Wilson and her 44-year-old niece Shirley Douglas were found strangled to death in Wilson’s apartment. The case remained unsolved for more than 17 years.

In November 2008 DNA evidence linked 53-year-old Reginald W. Perkins to the murders. Perkins had dated Wilson’s granddaughter and was on parole from an Ohio prison where he had served nine years for the rape and attempted rape of two 12-year-old girls. Perkins was already on death row for the December 2000 killing of his 64-year-old stepmother, Gertie Mae Perkins; her body had been found in the trunk of her car and evidence tied him to pawning her wedding ring and writing fraudulent checks from the family business. While awaiting trial for that murder, Perkins allegedly confessed to a fellow inmate that he killed Gertie and beaten her to death before robbing her.

Perkins was executed by lethal injection on January 22, 2009. An hour before his execution he proclaimed his innocence to a prison official, but the 2008 DNA link and his criminal history connected him to the 1991 double strangling. Did anyone in Fort Worth at the time notice a connection between Wilson’s family and Perkins that might have pointed investigators toward him sooner?