On October 18, 2005, a family friend checking on Dennis Dale Woodruff, 43, and his wife Norma in their new Royse City home found both dead from gunshot and stab wounds. Investigators using phone records estimated the couple was likely killed the evening of Sunday, October 16, 2005. The last known person to see them alive was their 19-year-old son, Brandon, who visited that Sunday before going to Dallas and then returning to his college campus in Abilene.

Detectives said Brandon initially hesitated to share his whereabouts that night, reportedly because he was trying to conceal his sexuality from family and community, and prosecutors made his sexual orientation a central element of the case. A dagger belonging to Brandon was recovered at the family’s old home, and prosecutors reported a gun and bullets were missing from his girlfriend’s house; there was no recovered gun from the crime scene and no physical evidence tying the dagger to the killings. Despite no eyewitnesses and the absence of direct physical evidence placing him at the scene, Brandon Woodruff was arrested, tried, convicted of capital murder in 2009, and sentenced to life in prison. He maintains his innocence and has said investigators focused on him because of his sexual orientation; the Innocence Project of Texas has taken up his case.

Are there readers who remember the Woodruff family in Royse City or who have information about the events of October 16–18, 2005?