Crime Junkie - MURDERED: Kathy Page

Episode Date: August 1, 2022

When a young woman is found dead in a crashed car, the first thought is a tragic accident. But after investigating the scene, investigators can clearly see this is a homicide. After interviewing friends and family, all signs point to her estranged husband... but thirty years later, he is still a free man.If you or anyone you know has ANY information on the murder of Kathy Page, please call 1-800-252-TIPS to contact Texas Crime Stoppers or you can submit a tip to crime stoppers online at https://www.p3tips.com/tipform.aspx?ID=650# . All tips are anonymous.For current Fan Club membership options and policies, please visit https://crimejunkieapp.com/library/.Source materials for this episode cannot be listed here due to character limitations. For a full list of sources, please visit https://crimejunkiepodcast.com/murdered-kathy-page/

Hi crime junkies, I'm your host Ashley Flowers, and the story I have for you today is about a young woman whose murder caused controversy in a small Texas town and left a family divided. Figuratively, and in this case literally, all signs seem to point to one man as the killer. And yet, decades later, this case remains open and unsolved. This is the story of Kathy Page. In the early morning hours of May 14, 1991, local police in Viter, Texas responded to a call about a car that's found crashed into a ditch.

Detective Ray Mosley is one of the first on the scene, and at first glance this appears to be a tragic accident. But as he approaches the vehicle, it takes him no time at all to realize something is off. There is a woman in the driver's seat, and even though she is in the car that just took a nosedive into a ditch and isn't wearing her seatbelt, her head is, like, laid back against the headrest, not falling forward like you might expect. Her feet are up against the driver's seat, not outstretched towards the pedals like you

also might expect. Her purse is still standing upright, there are soft rings that haven't even been spilled. The car itself even has very little damage, and there are no tire marks on the road suggesting that anyone tried to even stop the vehicle from going into the ditch. The woman's nose is visibly broken, and there is blood on the back of her head, but there is no blood on the steering wheel or anywhere else for that matter. Detective Mosley also notices clear marks around the woman's neck, and this is a woman who he recognizes as 34-year-old Kathy Page.

And listen, nothing about Kathy's death is saying tragic car accident to him. Sadly, no life-saving measures could be taken, and Kathy is pronounced dead at the scene. But before placing her body in a waiting ambulance, Detective Mosley takes a moment to note her appearance. Aside from that blood in her hair, she's completely clean. She isn't wearing any makeup or jewelry, and her clothing appears to be free from blood as well. So it's clear to Detective Mosley that not only was Kathy murdered, but he is certain

that she was not murdered in her car. Now that he knows he's dealing with a homicide, the question is, who could have wanted her dead? Before police can even dive into an investigation, they walk the 100 yards from the car that Kathy was found in to the home that she shared with her two daughters to inform her family of her death. According to reporting by Laurie Haynes for the Orange Leader, Detective Ray Mosley is immediately struck when Steve Page, Kathy's husband, answers the door wearing only his

underwear. Now to be fair, it was around 5 a.m. he was at home, but still Mosley notes it as odd. Even more odd, before Mosley can even get out the words that Kathy is dead, Steve says Kathy is not home and asks if this is about her, and then he seems to look in the direction of the car. Now the interaction just gets weirder from here. When police inform Steve that Kathy was killed, he throws himself onto the couch and begins like hysterically crying, except even though he's making the sounds and the faces of

someone who is hysterically crying, there are no visible tears. So Detective Mosley explains right then and there that Kathy didn't just simply die in a tragic car accident, but that the scene was clearly staged to appear that way. He tells Steve that Kathy appeared to have been strangled to death. And listen, while there is no right way to act while grieving, Steve's behavior is suspicious to the police right off the bat. Like he switches between speaking to authorities in a calm, collected manner and then like spontaneous fits of crying, you know, still minus the tears though.

And in the pre-dawn darkness, and I say darkness because this is the other weird thing, Steve won't turn on the lights even after he's asked to, but Detective Mosley notices a pile of clothes again in the dark on the living room floor. Now doesn't mention at the time, just kind of like makes note of it. All in all, in the time spent with Steve, authorities can't help but notice that he never once asked to see Kathy, nor did he try to go to the scene, even though again, you can literally see the flashing lights from his doorstep. After police leave around six a.m. on that same morning, Steve calls Kathy's mother

Dorothy Fulton, and he tells her that something terrible happened to Kathy. Within the hour, Dorothy and Kathy's father, James, are at the page home. Dorothy notices that Steve again is acting kind of strangely. He's like wiping his hands incessantly with a wet washcloth, and according to the Texas Court of Appeals, Dorothy also notices Steve is doing laundry, laundry at six a.m. Not even an hour after being informed that his wife was likely murdered. But when Steve's asked about this, he says that he's doing the laundry because his daughter wet the bed.

Now, listen, Joe is still in diapers. I don't know how I would react to this. So I asked one of the women in our office who has a son that's a little bit older and she said, honestly, this isn't weird to her. Like if her kid had an accident, she said it would almost be like instinctual to just like strip the bed, throw everything in the wash. Now I can't find any details about whether anyone confirmed what was actually being washed or that the kid actually did have an accident.

It's just a lot of people speculating. Now around 8 a.m., Kathy and Steve's two daughters, 12-year-old Aaron and seven-year-old Monica, wake up and are told the unthinkable has happened to their mother and she's gone. Family and friends are coming in and out all morning to offer condolences or just to be together during this time. And just as a side note, it's interesting to me that the home was not secured in any way. Like they established from about a second into the investigation that she wasn't killed

in her car, which means that they, to me, should be looking for another crime scene. Seems like maybe her own home would be a good place to start. But again, just a podcaster, what do I know? So these not podcasters let literally dozens of people traipse through the page home and let Steve do laundry and it's all just hunky dory. Anyway, one of those family members that comes through the page home is Kathy's sister, Jan. According to Jan, when she asks Steve what happened to Kathy, he says that she was probably

drunk and drove her car in a ditch, which makes no sense because police have already told Steve at this point that Kathy was murdered. It's not stated in the source material exactly what the family makes of Steve's behavior, but I have to imagine that they were just as confused as I am by his statements. But I also tend to think that between their own shock and grief that they may have just kind of written it off at first. What's harder, though, to write off is the fact that Steve tells police that he is against an autopsy.

And sure, there are cultural and religious reasons that oppose autopsies, but Steve's not citing any of those. He simply just doesn't want an autopsy to happen. So Kathy's father, James Fulton, steps in and he's the one that gives the OK against Steve's wishes to have her autopsy. And in the meantime, police get to work on their investigation. To start, they interview Kathy's friends and family to piece together a timeline and to try to understand who may have wanted to harm her.

And off the bat, they learn that Steve and Kathy's marriage was rocky, to say the least. Just the week before her death, Kathy actually asked for a separation from Steve. And on May 13th, that would have been the day before Kathy died, Steve was supposed to spend his first night sleeping at an apartment that he had rented due to their separation. So obviously now police are wondering, like, what the heck was he doing at the house the morning that they found Kathy murdered? Well, Steve tells police that there's a super innocent explanation for that, that Kathy called him and asked him to come over and watch the girls while she went out with a

friend named Charlotte. So police want to talk to Charlotte. According to the Cold Justice episode on this case titled The Case Behind the Billboards, Charlotte tells police that that's not necessarily a lie, but it's not the truth either. Now she doesn't think that Steve is necessarily lying because she doesn't think he knew the real truth, which was that Kathy had called her around 9.30 or 10pm on May 13th and asked her not to answer her phone in case Steve called to check up on her because she told him that she'd be with Charlotte.

But Kathy was actually planning to meet a man that she'd been seeing at a motel in nearby Beaumont. Now this information about another man is obviously hugely important to detectives. But police's interview with Charlotte reveals something else as well. Charlotte tells police that despite Kathy's request, when her phone rang at around 2am, she just instinctively picked it up. But whoever was on the other end didn't say anything, they just hung up. So her first thought was that it was probably Steve checking up on Kathy.

But she had no way to know for sure. She tells police that what she does know for sure is that Steve called her at 6am and she knows it was him because he spoke to her asking where Kathy was. Now at the time when she got this call at 6am, it wasn't super weird. But Charlotte finds it ultra weird now since she knows that by 6am Steve not only knew where Kathy was, but he also knew that she was dead. Why is he calling her? Now to be clear, as far as I can tell, the timing of this phone call is never corroborated

with phone records and I'm not sure why that is. It seems like a pretty simple thing to me to go back and check to verify exactly what time the call was made. But we only have this he said she said between Charlotte and Steve. And he's saying that the timing is all wrong. He says that he only made that first phone call at around 2.30am and he completely denies a later phone call. Though he does later change his story to include a second phone call, but changes the timing

of said phone call multiple times. So Charlotte on the other hand repeatedly says she is sure Steve called her between 5.30am and 6am. Now all of this is weird, but police now have someone else they need to talk to. They gotta get to this guy that Kathy was meeting that night. Police track him down, but the details about this encounter with him just really aren't there like you'd expect. Like I would have expected to know what questions they asked him, how they vetted him slash

his alibi. But there's almost nothing. We just know that he's super cooperative and even voluntarily takes a polygraph, which Detective Mosley says that he passes with flying colors. And then we know that they clear this guy. Though this man wasn't the killer that they were looking for, talking to him wasn't all for naught. They are able to narrow down their timeline for Kathy's murder because according to court

documents, Detective Mosley learns that Kathy left the motel in Beaumont at around 2.30am. Given the pages separation, the boyfriend being cleared and Charlotte's account of a phone call after Kathy was found, where Steve's asking where Kathy is like he doesn't know, not to mention Steve's strange behavior with police, authorities are laser focused in on Steve from the very beginning. Just one day after her murder, Steve visits with Kathy's mom and has a whole lot to say. He tells her off the wall things like that Kathy was using drugs, specifically doing cocaine at night and taking volume during the day.

He also kind of offhandedly mentions that he spilled some fish grease on the carpet the day before. And he tells her not to listen to Kathy's friends because they'll say he killed her. And I mean, dude is just all over the place. Stranger still, Steve refused to let police search their home when they requested to. And he tells Dorothy that the reason that he doesn't want the police poking around is because he's afraid they'll find Kathy's blood. Steve tells Dorothy as well as several other family members that Kathy was always shaving

her legs in the living room and that there may be droplets of her blood. And he thought that that might incriminate him if police found that though no one in the house reports seeing blood. Now, I don't know about any of you out there, but I don't know many people who opt to shave their legs in the middle of the living room. I certainly have never done that in my life. Either way, later that same day, Kathy's sister, Sherri Valentine visits the page home and immediately notices this really strong chemical odor when Steve answers the door.

Now Steve tells her about that like spilled fish grease on the carpet in their living room. She says that it happened when he was carrying this like pan or dish or whatever from the kitchen out to the trash outside and after it spilled, he needed to clean it up. Now just keep in mind, Steve has now told two people that he spilled fish grease on the carpet Wednesday, May 15. Now fast forward days later on Saturday, the 18th, Dorothy, her mom, witnesses Steve burning something in the backyard.

And when she asks him about it, Steve says that he spilled fish grease that day and then he missed the trash pickup. So he decided to burn the trash in his backyard. Now when asked by officials, Steve always sticks to this Saturday story and he denies that he ever said anything about spilling it on Wednesday to anyone. But if fish grease was spilled on Saturday, then what was the reason for the chemical odor right after Kathy's murder? And just in case you weren't sure what to believe already, one of his daughters says

that no fish grease ever spilled ever. And listen, I know this seems like a lot of hoopla over some fish grease, but as silly as it seems, it's one of the most contentious points of this case, mainly because of where the grease supposedly spilled. It seems to be around the same exact spot where Kathy supposedly cut herself shaving, which is just like ultra convenient. Apparently everything in that house happens in that spot. And it's also pointed out that even his story about spilling it doesn't really make sense

because I guess the way that their house was set up, it would have made no sense for him to take this thing across the living room floor to go outside to the trash because apparently there was like a door off the kitchen or something that would have given him a cleaner, clearer path to get rid of this stuff. Around this time, the results from Kathy's autopsy comes back and it reveals that Kathy was brutally beaten, which caused bruising and a broken nose, but ultimately her cause of death was manual strangulation, just as police had suspected. Also like police had suspected, according to the medical examiner's report, Kathy

was not killed in her car. There was no blood on the outside of her clothes, but there was transfer blood on the inside, which suggested that she was killed, cleaned up, and then redressed. There's also grass on her clothing, suggesting that she was actually dragged to the car to stage it as an accident. The autopsy also reveals that Kathy was dead by 4.30 am, which narrows down their window even further since we know she left the Beaumont at about 2.30. So they're working with only a two hour window of missing time.

Now it should be noted here that when Detective Mosley inspected her body, he reported that she had no makeup on and no jewelry, if you remember. While Kathy's friends and family are adamant that her nighttime routine was to put her hair up, take her makeup and jewelry off, and then go to bed. So for that reason, her friends and family feel strongly that Kathy drove the 15 minutes home to Viter after meeting her boyfriend in Beaumont and then had an altercation after getting ready for bed. And when you think about that scenario, there aren't many people she would have or even

could have interacted with at that hour in her own home. Interestingly, the autopsy also revealed that Kathy had sexual intercourse shortly before she died, which isn't too surprising because we know that she met up with her boyfriend. But something about what they found is surprising. According to the orange leader, the semen found was absent of spermatizoma, which is indicative of a person who has had a vasectomy. And wouldn't you know it? Detective Mosley confirmed that Steve Page had a vasectomy earlier that same year.

Now when police confront Steve with this evidence, he has an explanation. He says that just before Kathy went out that night that she died, at around 10.30pm, they had sex on the living room floor. Apparently, he is even specific enough and tells them that the spot they had sex on is the same spot where Kathy allegedly cut herself shaving. And once again, this case turns into a he said, she said, except she's not really here to say. Steve says that they had consensual sex just before she went out to meet her new boyfriend.

But the people who are speaking up on Kathy's behalf are her friends and her family. And they say that they were for sure separated and basically a decision to divorce was made. They're adamant that Kathy and Steve had not been intimate in a very long time. Now in the days since Kathy's death, again, I don't have a ton of information on exactly what police were actually doing. But I do know that they hadn't even secured the scene still. I know the scene wasn't secured because on Sunday, May 19, Kathy's mom Dorothy and her brother Jimmy visit the page home.

And when they arrive, they find Steven's mother, Steven's sister, and his sister-in-law all shampooing the carpet. When they ask what they're doing, their response is, oh, you know, just still trying to get out that pesky fish grease. Now Jimmy notices that they're all working on one single spot, not like a trail or a splatter of grease. So armed with the results of the autopsy and knowing that his sister lost blood the night she died, it's in that moment that Jimmy knows in his gut, Steve killed Kathy, though

his gut feeling isn't enough for police to make an arrest. But in July of 1991, Viter police do release a statement that Steve is their prime and only suspect. And in that same July statement, police ask for witnesses to come forward. According to that episode of Cold Justice, police do receive a tip from a man who says that he saw a man he identified as Steve Page crossing the street away from the car in the ditch on that night. But police never verified this sighting, and once again, nothing comes of it.

This pass with no substantial movement in the case and the rift between Kathy's family and Steve Page just gets deeper and deeper. Those weeks become months and the case gets stale. All the while, Kathy's father, James is becoming more and more enraged, enraged with the police for making no arrests, enraged with Steve because he believes he murdered his daughter and enraged with Steve's family for covering up and lying for him. After realizing that he might die waiting for Viter police to take action, he thinks of a way to take justice into his own hands.

If Steve Page wouldn't be found guilty in a court of law, he at least wanted him to be guilty in a court of public opinion. According to reporting by Peter Sheridan for Express UK, around 1993, James erected billboards on property that he owned on the side of Interstate 10. The billboards said things like, I believe my daughter was raped when she was strangled to death in 1991, and he even had some that read, Viter police botched this case. Sadly, the only thing that the billboards seem to accomplish is severing the relationship between the Fultons and the Page family completely, which meant that Kathy's daughters, Aaron

and Monica, were deprived of not only their relationship with their mom, but her entire side of the family as well. Years pass, and with no movement in the case at all, the Fulton family decides to pursue a wrongful death civil suit, which would help them do a couple of things. One, it would hold Steve at the very least financially and morally responsible for Kathy's death. And two, it would allow the family to ensure Kathy's life insurance payout goes to Aaron and Monica and not Steve.

In 1995, the civil trial began, a jury of 12 were assembled, and Steve Page finally had to stick to a version of events under oath. And just when you think things in this case couldn't get more complicated, they do. According to Laurie Haines reporting in June 1995, the civil trial that sought to block Steve from getting Kathy's life insurance payout is set to begin. Testimony begins on June 14, and timelines and all the he said, she said is brought into question. A lot of what we already know is reiterated, like Detective Mosley testifies under oath

that Steve is their prime suspect. He also reveals that when he asked Steve why he was refusing to let them search the page home, Detective Mosley said, quote, he said he was afraid we might find something that might make it look like he did it, end quote. Testimony also reveals some things we didn't already know, like there was a search warrant obtained in 1994 and that samples of the carpet where the blood and grease were supposedly spilled were collected and tested, but the results are not made public. Detective Mosley also states that Steve's sister-in-law thoroughly cleaned the carpet

in that spot where the fish grease was spilled. It's also confirmed definitively that this was the spot where Kathy allegedly cut her legs shaving. And again, this is why Steve was afraid that they might find blood that he says is innocent. Oh, and if this wasn't clear earlier, that spot where multiple people were seen cleaning, that spot where Kathy supposedly cut herself, where fish grease was supposedly spilled, just also happens to be that spot where Steve and Kathy supposedly had sex that night that she died.

And listen, I'm no mathematician, but the chances of that being a coincidence, like everything happening in this one spot, seem pretty low to me. Now, it also comes out in the trial that Steve Page was recently indicted for vandalizing Kathy's grave. A cemetery worker testifies that he witnessed Steve kick over flowers and remove flowers that were there when he arrived. A private investigator hired by the Fultons even shows video footage of Steve throwing flowers that he plucked from her grave site and kicking them around.

So obviously, things are looking bad for Steve. Testimony seems to be going in favor of the Fultons. And that's when Sherry Valentine, Kathy's sister, takes the stand. According to reporting from the trial, Sherry Valentine's testimony in part stated, quote, It seemed so simple that if all he had to do was go clear himself, they could start looking for the other person who could have done this. It was very devastating for my nieces to imagine that their daddy could have done this. It was too much for me to comprehend.

Although I knew the way he treated her, I still didn't want to believe he did it. It would be too much of a tragedy for them to lose their mom. I was asking him, why don't you go clear yourself? And he said, they're trying to frame me and wouldn't take a lie detector test. End quote. Now, listen, while this doesn't really seem like a riveting piece of testimony, apparently Sherry was instructed not to mention anything about a polygraph test. And because she did, another roadblock appeared on their journey for justice.

Now, it's not stated if Sherry was kind of intentionally led towards this line of questioning or if this was purely an accident. But either way, because she brought that up, Steve's attorney moved for a mistrial. The judge kind of like discusses this with the council privately and shortly thereafter, he declares the case a mistrial, meaning that they would have to go through all of this again, which for a lot of people might have been discouraging. But the Fultons just file suit once more. And in November of 1995, the second civil trial begins.

And this time, Steve actually takes the stand. According to reporting for the orange leader, Steve is questioned under oath about his marriage and about the events before and after Kathy's death. He testifies that he doesn't believe his marital problems were quote unquote that bad. He's adamant that although he was moving out and had agreed to separation that he and Kathy were still intimate. Steve testifies on the stand that he did in fact call Charlotte at around 6am. He tells the court quote, about 6am, she still wasn't home.

So I called her friend and asked where Kathy was. She said Kathy left at 3am, end quote. Now he goes on to say that after the phone call, he got a knock on the door from police. But according to police's timeline, that was well before 6am. And it seems like Steve even contradicts himself in this. Because he also testifies that about 6am is when he called Dorothy Fulton to inform her that something terrible had happened. So which is it?

Did you know it's six or not? Steve while he's on the stand denies burning anything in his backyard. He also denies ever making a statement about Kathy cutting her legs shaving. And all of a sudden that just didn't happen. Basically Steve just denies anything that can't be definitively proven, even if it was heard or seen by multiple witnesses. Now he does admit to vandalizing Kathy's grave, but he says that it was because he was angry with the Fultons, not with Kathy, stating quote, we made the grave our battlefield.

End quote. But it's worth noting as far as I can tell the Fultons never vandalized their battlefield. Now Dorothy gets up, she reiterates that on the morning when she arrived to the page home, she was under the impression through Steve's comments that Kathy's death was an accident and only later did she find out that Kathy was murdered, which truly bizarre again because Steve knew full well at that point that Kathy was murdered. So why is he insinuating anything else to her mother? And then Dorothy also brings up on the stand the fact that she saw Steve doing laundry

the morning that Kathy died. And she kind of really like lets it hit home how suspicious that was to her. The testimony goes on and on and honestly, this would have been more than one episode to go through every detail and inconsistency that was testified to. But for jurors, it all really boils down to a few questions. Did Steve have motive to kill Kathy? Did Steve have the means and opportunity to kill Kathy? And is there enough evidence to support one theory over another?

By November 18th of 95, both sides rest their cases and it's up to the jury to deliberate. After four hours, they reveal that they're deadlocked. They tell the court no more deliberation will change the outcome and the second trial ends in a hung jury. At this point, I can't even begin to imagine the frustrations of the Fultons. Ever long years pass before the Fultons file yet another civil suit against Steve in October of 1999. At this point, Steve has since moved away from Viter and is living in Alabama and he

only returns for the trial. Once again, testimony begins, witnesses recall much of the same information we've heard before in this case. But something that is different this time is Erin Page, she's now 20 years old. It's Kathy's daughter and she takes the stand to defend her dad. According to reporting by Brian Cox for the Orange Leader, she tells jurors that she never heard her parents argue and that her dad never slept on the couch, which directly contradicts previous testimony from other witnesses who said their marriage was super bad.

Sherry Valentine, Kathy's sister, also gives testimony this time and reveals to the court that she had stayed in the page's home in the past and witnessed Steve abuse Kathy. Though Steve's testimony refutes that and states that Sherry never even stayed with them. Again, we're back on this carousel of he said, she said, and we go round and round and all of the previous testimony is reiterated for a new jury. And by October 16th of 1999, both prosecution and defense rest their case again. And I'm sure the Fultons are worried that once again, Steve Page isn't going to be

held accountable, but the jury returns a verdict in favor of the Fultons 11 to 1. Their win means that the $50,000 life insurance payout will go to Aaron and Monica. And the Fultons also get $150,000 in damages awarded to them personally. Now it's easy to forget this is just a civil suit. And though this win is validation, it means nothing for a criminal trial. And a year later, Steve Page appealed the decision of the civil trial. And so another exhaustive look into the case begins. According to the court of appeals of Texas decision document, the court upheld the judgment

and a few of the following reasons were cited for doing so. The court determined that Steve had motive. His strange behavior before and following Kathy's death was indicative of guilt. And Steve would give implausible explanations as to why there might be blood or why there was fish grease on the carpet. According to documents we found on caselaw.finelaw.com, the court states, quote, Bewed in light most favorable to the verdict, we cannot say that the circumstantial evidence is equally susceptible to conflicting inferences or theories.

If, as the circumstantial evidence indicates, Kathy returned to her home before she was killed, there was only one person there who had both the motive and opportunity to kill Kathy. Stephen Page. More than a scintilla of evidence supports the jury's finding that Steve Page killed Kathy Page, end quote. After the dust settles, Steve Page goes on to live a relatively normal life away from Viter and away from the Fulton family.

As for James Fulton, his billboards stay up year after year in Viter. Over the years, he's changed what they say and updated them as needed, but they actually never come down. Sometimes they say that Viter police took a bribe. Other times they've featured a photo of Steve Page himself that reads quote, Steve Page brutally murdered his wife in 1991. Viter PD does not want to solve this case. I believe they took a bribe.

The attorney general should investigate, signed her father, end quote. His billboards have been a source of pain and anger for a lot of people in and around Viter, but to some, they're a source of inspiration. According to Peter Sheridan's reporting, a British filmmaker named Martin McDonough saw the billboards and was so haunted by them that it inspired the premise for his Oscar-winning film Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri. In the film, a fictional mother of a murdered girl takes out her rage and frustration with the local police by renting three billboards, calling them out for their inaction.

In the film is proof that even just a passing glance helps people to understand the amount of pain and frustration the Fulton family feels with the lack of action in this investigation. Because without ever knowing Kathy's story, the synopsis of three billboards is eerily similar to what happened to Kathy Page. According to an exclusive interview between Steve Page and the Daily Mail in 2018, Steve is living in Houston and says this has ruined his life. When talking about Kathy's murder and the fallout that followed, he tells reporters quote, after a certain time, people that aren't part of your life, they aren't part of your

life and you don't think about them. You've got other things to think about, end quote. Sadly, Monica Page died from a prescription drug overdose in 2011 at the age of just 27. Her sister, Erin, is alive and living in Nashville, Tennessee with her two children. Erin has been vocal that she just wants the truth and she's hopeful that the film that was made has brought much needed attention to her mother's case. Interestingly, Erin has a blog in which she writes about her mother's case and in the latest post, at least as of recording this episode, she refers to her dad as Steve, not

my dad, suggesting that they might be estranged at best. We attempted to contact Erin using a phone number that we believe belongs to her, but we weren't able to hear back. Kathy's mother Dorothy died in 2012, but James Fulton continues to fight for justice for Kathy to this day. He bears the weight of this case on his shoulders, and though people in and around Vitor are open about their disdain for the billboards, James believes that he has no choice until progress is made in the case.

As of July 2022, no new developments have been made in the case, and the Texas Department of Public Safety's website still lists Kathy's case as unsolved. If you look under suspects, they have simply written quote, yes. This case can be difficult to wrap your mind around. There has only ever been one suspect. Steve had motive, he had opportunity, he was even held civilly responsible for her death. So why has there been no progress in the case? One thing is certain, Kathy Page was brutally murdered and somehow her killer has gotten

away with it for over 30 years. If you or anyone you know has any information on the murder of Kathy Page, please call 1-800-252-8335. To contact Texas Crime Stoppers, or you can submit a tip to Crime Stoppers online, we're going to put that link in our show notes. All tips to Crime Stoppers are anonymous. Listen, no matter how insignificant you might think your tip is, the smallest piece of information could be the missing link that police need to finally get justice for Kathy. Crime Junkie is an audio chuck production.

So, what do you think Chuck, do you approve?