Emily Elizabeth LaQua was 14 when she was killed on March 20, 1982, in Brookshire, Texas. She had recently moved from Seattle to live with her father, Frank LaQua, after her parents’ divorce and was preparing to begin work as a waitress. On the evening of her death she left her father’s home after an argument, intending to walk to her new job; she never arrived and was reported missing the next day.

For five months she was treated as a runaway. In August 1982 her body was found hidden in a culvert in Waller County after Coral Eugene Watts led investigators to the site. Watts later confessed to multiple murders in Texas and Michigan and included Emily among those he admitted killing; she was the youngest known victim he named.

Emily’s family suffered further losses after her death: her father disappeared after the funeral and was later declared dead, and her brother Franklin died following a seizure two years later. Her mother, Elizabeth Young, went on to become a pastor and social worker and spoke about keeping Watts incarcerated. Did anyone in the Brookshire area at that time remember Emily or see her the night she left home?