Courtesy of: Tonia
Vineyard
Genealogy Assistant
Wichita Falls Public Library
May 19, 2000
Wichita Falls Times
December 23, 1984
Terry
Lee Sims,
20 of 1610 Easy Street died Thursday in Wichita Falls. She was born
May 14, 1964 in Wichita Falls. She worked at Bethania Regional
Health Care Centre in the EKG department.
Survivors include her mother, Marsha Bridgens of California,
her grandparents, Mr and Mrs Gill Bridgens of Bridgeport
Texas, and Mr and Mrs Jack Sims of Iowa Park; her great
grandmother Mrs Beda
Wingrove of
Wichita Falls; a half sister Vickie Sims of Wichita Falls; a
half-sister Catherine Smith of Bridgeport; and a half brother
Antony Estrada of Wichita Falls
Interment : Crestview Memorial Park, under the direction of Owens
& Brumley Funeral Home.
Wichita Falls Times
December 21, 1984
MSU Student found stabbed to death
20 year old MidWestern State University student was  stabbed
to death at a city rent house. Miss Sims was an employee of Bethania
Regional Health Care Centre and a sophomore elementary education
major at MSU.
. . . the woman had been stabbed several times and that
her hands had been tied behind her back.
. . . the woman who was renting the house, Leza Boone
discovered the body when she returned home from work. She also is
employed at Bethania.
It looks like she was killed between 12:30 a.m. and 4 a.m.
Related
Links : § Social Security
Death Index - Texas
Related Links Off Site :
§ The
Soul of an Angel Gives Comfort
§ In Memory
of
§ CONVICTED MURDERER CHARGED
IN UNSOLVED KILLINGS
Prosecutor: Texas Man Confesses to Four Slayings
Feb. 18, 1999
By Amy Worden
WICHITA FALLS, Texas (APBnews.com) -- Convicted killer Faryion Edward
Wardrip, who served 11 years in prison for suffocating a 21-year-old waitress, has confessed to killing four other Texas women in the mid-1980s.
Wichita County District Attorney Barry Macha told APB News today that Wardrip admitted that he killed college student Terry Lee Sims in
1984 and three other women in 1985.
Wardrip, 39, was charged last week with capital murder in the stabbing death of Sims, and two more counts of capital murder were
added Tuesday for the killings of Toni Gibbs and Ellen Blau. He was indicted by a grand jury in the Sims and Blau slayings Wednesday.Wardrip will be arraigned on the Sims and Blau cases in the next few weeks, while the Gibbs case will go to trial in neighboring Archer County on March 5, Macha said.
10 unsolved killings
Macha said Wardrip has also admitted strangling 25-year-old Fort Worth homemaker Debra Taylor, whose body was found in a grove of trees on March 29, 1985, five days after she disappeared. Fort Worth investigators arrived at Wichita County jail Wednesday to question Wardrip about the Taylor case, and he has yet to be charged.
The Taylor homicide was one of 10 unsolved cases that occurred about the same period that Wardrip admitted he killed the other women.
Macha said he does not know if there will be any additional charges filed against Wardrip but said he is convinced a number of unsolved cases will get a fresh look.
"I do expect more re-examination of those files," said Macha. It was a combination of "old-fashioned police work" and modern DNA analysis that connected Wardrip to the murders and helped crack cold cases
that had stumped police, Macha said.
DNA clears two
"Police had been looking at different suspects in all the cases," he said. "After
two suspects were cleared by DNA in the Sims and Gibbs cases all bets were off. I knew we had to start from scratch and see if these cases were
related." After discovering that the DNA from sperm found in the bodies of Sims and
Gibbs matched, Macha brought in a new detective early this year to go through the files and see if any suspects' names matched.
Paroled in 1997, Wardrip had remarried, taken a job working for a screen and
door factory and become a regular churchgoer, even teaching Sunday school
to children at Hamilton Street Church of Christ in his hometown of Olney.
Saliva from a coffee cup
When Wardrip's name surfaced in the files, Macha sent a detective to the
factory where Wardrip worked. The detective followed Wardrip until he saw him toss a used coffee cup in the waste basket, which the detective retrieved. The DNA from Wardrip's saliva on the cup matched the DNA found on Sims and Gibbs, said Macha.
The body of the first victim, Sims, a Midwestern State University education major and health care worker, was found in a friend's bathroom Dec. 20, 1984. Her hands were tied with an electrical cord. She had been stabbed 11 times and raped.
Wichita Falls terrorized
Sims' murder was one of four that occurred in Wichita Falls over an 18-month period, terrifying women residents who began buying guns and avoiding going out alone at night. Gibbs' body was found Feb. 15, 1985, in an abandoned bus in Archer County. She too had been stabbed multiple times and raped. In the third case, Wardrip was indicted in the 1985 death of Blau, a 21-year-old Midwestern State University student whose rotting corpse was found Oct. 10, 1985, in a field north of Wichita Falls, Wichita County Assistant District Attorney Rick Mahler said.
Wardrip pleaded guilty to suffocating 21-year-old waitress Tina Kimbrew in her apartment sometime before May 6, 1986, and was sentenced in December 1986 to 35 years in prison.
Amy Worden is an APB News national correspondent.
Looking
for more ? Try
Extras
|
|
