Tracy Jo Shine, 24, was last seen April 8, 1987, in Harris County, Texas. Investigators later determined she was murdered in the couple’s home in the 7900 block of Machala by her live-in boyfriend, Michael Durwood Neal. Neal reportedly believed Shine had informed police about his drug activity and later bragged about killing her.

The case went cold until the Harris County Sheriff’s cold case unit reopened it in 1999. Evidence showed Neal stored Shine’s body in a refrigerator for several months and then tried to dissolve it in muriatic acid. A recovered refrigerator yielded a single hair and a small amount of human tissue; mitochondrial DNA matched those remains to Shine. Neal was charged in March 2000, pleaded guilty in January 2001, and led police to a strip mall near Jones Road and FM 1960 where he said he’d disposed of her body in a garbage bin. Shine’s remains have never been recovered and are believed to be in a city landfill.

Shine was described as a talented dancer accepted to a performing arts high school in Houston; she later dropped out and moved in with Neal at age eighteen. Does anyone have information about the Machala neighborhood or the Jones Road and FM 1960 area from the late 1980s that could help locate her remains?