Post Mortem | Kimberly Langwell's Hidden Grave

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0:38Welcome to Postmortem. I'm your host, Anne-Marie Green, 48 Hours Correspondent. And today we are discussing the case of Kim Langwell, who went missing on July 9th, 1999 in Texas. Her daughter, Tiffany McInnes, was just 15 years old at the time and then spent over two decades wondering what happened to her mother. And then in 2024, investigators found Kim's body buried under the floor of her ex-boyfriend's house, who was still living there all those years later. So with me now to discuss his report is 48 Hours correspondent Peter Van Sant. Peter, welcome. This is quite a case. Yes, and great to be with you again, Anne-Marie.

1:22I've covered a lot of cases in which people have disposed of their victims in, shall I say, unique ways, burning, sinking, burying, dismembering and scattering, even leaving them out for animals to consume. But never have I covered one where a victim is buried under the floorboards in the killer's house. It's just mind boggling when you really put this together. And as we hear from the judge what she had to say in this hour, this killer was a real psychopath. A quick reminder to everyone, if you haven't actually watched this episode yet or listened to it, it's called Kimberly Langwell's Hidden Grave.

2:01Go check it out and then come on back for this conversation. All right. So when Kim Langwell first disappeared, investigators considered a few possible suspects, including her then boyfriend, Ken Weatherford, and Kim's former boss, Frank McCormick, who police discovered would send her love letters, leave presents at her home. And then Frank's behavior became sort of even more suspicious when they discovered these disturbing photo collages he sent Kim of women, other women's bodies, but with her face on it. Can you just explain more about how Ken and Frank were then eventually ruled out in this investigation?

2:41I know, and both of them sound like persons of interest. Often the spouse or the romantic partner, as our viewers well know, is where police first start their investigation. But Ken Weatherford had a solid alibi. He was with Kim's daughter, Tiffany, during the time frame that her mother went missing. Frank McCormick's behavior upset Kim, but Frank willingly provided a statement. Around the time Kim disappeared, he told investigators he was at a grocery store to buy some chips for a poker game. And he had the receipt to prove it. so investigators determined he had an alibi at the time and we reached out by the way for an interview with frank mccormick but he declined okay so then the original investigators move on and they look into kim's ex-boyfriend terry rose he admits that he saw her on the evening that she disappeared and hadn't heard from her after that obviously but investigators found terry rose vague He failed a polygraph test.

3:46He becomes the prime suspect at this time? Well, Detective Ball was pretty certain that Terry Rose was lying. And if someone's lying to an investigator, you know, that sets off the alarm. Not a good sign. But he didn't have any real evidence yet to confront him with. And people always have to remember, they can't arrest on a feeling. They need evidence. And Rose did come willingly to the police station, and he provided a statement. Rose said that on the evening she disappeared, Kim arrived around 510 or 515 p.m. and was at his house for just a short time, he said, before leaving to go meet her daughter, Tiffany.

4:21Detective Ball thought he was being cooperative, allowing police to search in and around his house. Murderers don't do that, right? They don't say, hey, come on over, look around, do anything you want. So investigators said that there was lots of junk inside that house everywhere, but no evidence of Kim or that any violence had occurred inside that house. And a little bit more on Rose, he is perplexing because he didn't have a criminal record and still to this day has never had any other criminal record through the years. This is his one and only. But here's the thing, with Kim's family and her friends, they were suspicious of him.

5:02Kim's friend Esther said that Rose was violent, that he was controlling, that Kim even told Esther that she was afraid that if she tried to leave, he would kill her. What was Rose's behavior like after Kim disappeared? Well, Tiffany witnessed Terry's obsessive behavior after the relationship ended. He would call the house at all times of the day and night. He would lurk around outside and he questioned Tiffany on Kim's whereabouts. I mean, this was really creepy. And all of that stopped when Kim went missing. Isn't that interesting? And according to Kim's sister, Susan, he put up those billboards around town, you know, asking for help in finding her.

5:46But the family felt it wasn't in a genuine effort to find her. Perhaps it was just performative, a manipulation, perhaps, to show police that he was concerned to find her. You know, Tiffany is just 15. I have a daughter in that age range. This is the time when you will be growing into from a child, really, to a young woman. There's no good time, obviously, to lose your mother. But 15 is particularly crucial. These billboards, it must have been kind of torturous emotionally for Tiffany. That's the word. It was torturous for her to go out and there out in the public, a giant billboard with your mother's picture on it.

6:30It was traumatic. And how she made it through all of that to this wonderful woman that we know today is such an accomplishment. She went through hell. So, you know, Rose is out there putting up these billboards. Did he actually reach out to Tiffany? I don't know. Did he try to console her? Not at all. And in fact, she told us about a disturbing interaction she had with Rose at a Jack in the Box restaurant a few years after her mother's disappearance. Let's listen to a conversation we had about that. At 18 years old, I remember walking into a jack-in-the-box to get some food, and I have somebody standing behind me, and I go to turn around, and Terry Rose is in my face.

7:16He's standing right in front of me, and it just shocked me. I thought, oh my God. And he looks directly at me, and he says, you remember me? And I said, do I remember you? Yeah, yeah, I remember you. And he said, have you seen your mom lately? No. And my mouth just dropped open. I was so scared and I wanted to be strong. And I just remember looking at him and I said, yeah, I see her in my dreams. It was so odd to ask me if I remembered him just three years after I lost my mom. And I'd lived in this man's house for five years. Tiffany said she felt like he was taunting her, knowing the entire time that he had her mother's remains.

8:11So awful. So here we are with this case, though, back then. There's no physical evidence. So the case goes cold. And it's decades later when Beaumont police decide that they want to reinvestigate. But I wonder why. Why did they think that this was a case worth taking a second look at? The TV program Cold Justice reached out to the department asking about unsolved cases that they might feature on their show. And then Beaumont PD suggested Kim's case. Cold Justice chose to investigate, and the Beaumont PD appointed detectives to work alongside them and re-interview old suspects. And that was key.

8:55So then we have a new team led by a new detective, Detective Heather Wilson. They have fresh eyes. They take a closer look at Terry Rose. It's 2023 now. He is 66 years old. His health isn't the best. What story does he tell police all these years later about what happened? Just kind of rewinding the tape. Police approached him in 2023 and Rose was still adamant he had nothing to do with Kim's disappearance. Investigators did interview him again in 2024. Our team watched that interview and investigators asked Rose direct comments about Kim. Yet he had a way of constantly changing the conversation.

9:37Rose was obsessed. Remember, he's an old guy now. He's obsessed with his cats. He was asking cops to go feed his cats. He knew they were going to visit his house with a search warrant. But what was he concerned about? His kitty cats. and also you know by this point he doesn't look like a murderer he looks like a grandpa in 2001 when the fbi assisted the police in interviewing terry rose he acknowledged that he didn't have an alibi for the crucial hours around 5 30 and that's when investigators believe kim went missing but rose did tell them that he met up with a friend david wiley they shot pool in that evening from around 9.30 p.m.

10:17to midnight. At the time, David corroborated his story, but after all these years, did investigators believe that they could get perhaps more information out of David, more than they could get out of Terry? Well, investigators felt that David Wiley was the weakest link in that original investigation, so they decided to really put some pressure on him. Prosecutors convened a grand jury. If you lie, it's perjury. Right. But both stuck to their stories. But investigators kept pressing Wiley. And after striking an immunity deal with him, he spilled the beans. And he agreed to take a polygraph test.

10:56And he made this confession. He said, Rose told him that Kim was at his house. They got into an argument. And then he shot her. According to Wiley, Rose told him that he, quote, put her under the slab in one of the bedrooms. So this is a huge break in the case, right? Investigators want to arrest Harry Rose, but they can't. Not yet, because the DA insists that they have to get physical evidence to back up David Wiley's story. Detectives are worried that if Rose finds out about this, David Wiley and Rose's common-law wife, Violet, could be in danger. So they set up this really interesting ruse.

11:37On June 10th, 2024, they call Terry Rose and Violet to the police station under the pretense that they want to discuss his father's homicide, which had occurred five years after Kim's disappearance. Once they're there, investigators serve Rose with a warrant. Can you talk a little bit about this bait and switch and how it worked? Ah, very clever move. The ever obsessive Terry Rose was no longer in control. and investigators were at his house while Rose talked with cops back at the station. It was brilliant. I'm curious about the technology that they use to search for the body. You don't really hear about ground penetrating radar very often.

12:18Right. But these radars work like a submarine sonar. It sends down waves, it bounce back, and it reveals images. And the FBI was there first with their experts. Investigators knew the body was under a bedroom based on what David Wiley had told them. So the FBI focused on one of the two bedrooms there. But after three days of searching, the equipment had to be pulled out and they hadn't yet found anything significant. That's where this case takes a fascinating turn, because that's where a man named Tim Miller comes in. After his own daughter was abducted and murdered, he formed a nonprofit called Texas EquiSearch.

12:59He has since found so many missing people through his company. It's a true labor of love what he does, honoring his daughter Laura's memory. And Miller believes his daughter, just as a quick aside, was killed by a man named Clyde Edwin Hedrick, the longtime suspect in the Texas Killing Fields case. And 48 Hours covered this case. And in 1984, 16-year-old Laura Miller was found in the same field, not far from where another victim had been found. Hedrick wasn't charged or sentenced in connection to her death and recently died in March 2026. It's a shame that someone who's doing so much good work for other families can never really get the closure that, you know, he was seeking.

13:48All right, so let's get back to Terry Rose's house. So where does the investigation go from there? Well, so Tim Miller looked in the other bedroom that had not yet been checked. And that's where his team found the location of Kim's body in a matter of minutes. And it's not in the show, but I interviewed the ground penetrating radar operator who showed me how it worked. He put the machine down. It senses a disturbance, what they call in the space under the floor. and then Tim knocks and hears that it has a hollow sound. So Kim's body was found completely skeletonized and wrapped in a blanket with a gunshot wound to the back of her head.

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15:53Welcome back. On June 13, 2024, this is more than two decades after Kim Langwell went missing, Terry Rose was arrested for her murder. And detectives also brought Terry's wife, Violet, into the interrogation room. her reaction to finding out where Kim's body had been found was one of the most intense parts of this episode. Absolutely. It was like an electrical current ran through her when she found out. It was very powerful, even devastating. And Violet was working for Terry Rose around the time that Kim disappeared way back then. And she knew Kim. We reached out to Violet for an interview, but she declined.

16:38I mean, this was such a traumatic incident for her, but authorities came away feeling very comfortable that she had nothing to do with this and no knowledge of it. I mean, it's more than shocking. It's sickening to think that, you know, they are living in this house and this body has been decomposing for decades just below their feet. Yeah, just try to imagine that. He had two kids with his first wife and it was the kid's bedroom. So his children were walking around and he knew right below their feet was this corpse. Ugh, it's so eerie. So next thing up is the trial. But then just a week before the trial is set to begin, Rose's defense attorney approached prosecutor Luke Nichols about a plea deal.

17:26So Nichols offered a maximum sentence of 40 years without the ability to appeal in exchange for a guilty plea from Rose. I mean, it's been decades now. This reckoning has been coming for a long time. I wonder how Tiffany felt about not going to trial. Well, initially, Tiffany wasn't happy about the deal. She wanted to go to trial because if convicted, Rose would have faced the possibility of life in prison. But then she realized that with the uncertainty of what a jury might decide, it was best to take the deal. And Tiffany understands that since Rose was going to be going into prison at age 68, a 40-year sentence would put him over 100, which is why this, in her mind, is a life sentence.

18:16Was anyone there to support Terry Rose at the sentencing? Investigators believe that he had absolutely no supporters. Violet and his kids were not in the courtroom. David Wiley. He entered the courtroom quickly. He testified and then he quickly left. He looked very nervous and paranoid in the hallway outside of the court. He declined our request for an interview. But on the stand, he said that he had come forward because he didn't want this on his conscience anymore. Easy to say now. I mean, if only he'd come forward a couple of decades earlier, right? Yes. And then prosecutors played a pretty damning recorded jail call between Terry Rose and his son, who was also named Terry.

19:05Right. Rose said he wasn't a psychopath. He just had a bad day and he dealt with it wrong. That's the way he said it. His son joked about Tiffany dying. And Terry Rose says he would pee in a cup and send it to his son to pour on Tiffany's grave. that tape is being played in court. Tiffany is hearing this. This is one last final dig. And the judge heard this tape and boy, did she have something to say. Let's take a listen. There's just certain things that I can't even look past to not point out. Who isn't a psychopath that kills someone that they once cared about and buries them in their house and lives on top with them for 25 years.

19:54I would think that's the definition in Webster's Dictionary of a psychopath. There is a part of me that wishes I had not accepted this plea agreement and that we had gone to trial last week because I do think a jury would have given you life for 99 years. I actually do. If I had 50, I'd give you 50. If I had 60, I'd give you 60. I mean, you can understand the judge's point of view on this. Yeah, we we also admired her. She really put him in his place. You mentioned earlier that, in fact, Terry Rose's father was a homicide victim. Have investigators ever looked into Rose as a suspect? Because that was honestly the first thing that I thought.

20:34Well, it's interesting. Rose's father's case is still an open homicide investigation. He was murdered in 2004 on his property, which, by the way, is right next door to his son Terry Rose's house. And Rose is the one who found him dead the next morning. In 2023, Detective Wilson said they started looking back into Joseph's case, the father, and found a good suspect lead to follow up on. But she also said, we do not believe Rose is involved in the murder of his father. Okay. At sentencing, Tiffany gave a very emotional victim impact statement. We heard some of it in the show, but I want to play an extended clip of her statement.

21:18Kimberly Langwell has been a name and a face on a missing person poster for the last 25 years. But to me, she was my mother, my anchor, the center of my world. You refer to the day you murdered my mother and buried her beneath your bedroom as a bad day. That bad day cost me everything. It stole my childhood, my sense of safety, my trust, the future that her and I planned, and the chance for my children to ever know their grandmother. You have no regard for human life. Held her captive even in death. What a line. That is so powerful. She said it all with conviction, determination, and courage, and she looked directly at Rose.

22:09She wanted to make sure he was looking at her and heard every word and saw the pain on her face. That's what I wondered, Peter. I wondered if this was empowering for her, right? Because here's this guy that tried to intimidate her as a teenager. It must have just meant so much. He has to sit there and listen to it and take it. Yeah, absolutely, Anne-Marie. This was her moment. She rose to the occasion. she's so strong despite not having a mother after the age of 15. Of course. I mean, where does this strength come from? How does she move forward? She now goes out and does various speaking engagements.

22:54And when the Beaumont Police Department, when they hire new people, they present certain cases to teach them about how they operate. And Tiffany goes with Detective Heather Wilson and she talks about her mother's case. She is moving on with her life. She has two kids. Her daughter is now around the age that she was when her mother disappeared. And that daughter's name is Kimber. It's a variation of her mother's name, Kim. And in this case, through this tragedy, they can finally celebrate Tiffany's journey to find final justice. And in the end, she prevailed. I love that they get to have the final say about their loved one, not him.

23:38And the other thing that I love about this hour is this is a story about dedicated badass women. Tiffany McGinnis, who never gave up hope, lead investigator Heather Wilson, who takes on this decades long case, and then the judge, Raquel West, holding both Terry Rose and David Wiley's feet to the fire. Yeah, the circle is closed. Yeah. It's a tragic circle, but at least at the end of the day, there is that satisfaction. Thank you so much, Peter. Thank you. If you like this episode, please rate and review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.

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