INFAMOUS: Lovers' Lane Murders

0:28Hi, Crime Junkies. merch collection online right now. To grab your tickets and to shop the new merch, head to CrimeJunkiePodcast.com. Hi, Crime Junkies. I'm your host, Ashley Flowers. And I'm Brit. And the story I have for you today is one of Houston's most brutal cold cases, one that still haunts the city to this day. But as we Crime Junkies know, cold doesn't mean unsolvable. And hopefully, that's where you all come in. This is the story of Andy Atkinson and Cheryl Henry.

1:34When 19-year-old Shane Henry pulls up to give her older sister Cheryl a ride to work on the morning of August 23, 1990, she does what most teenagers do in the pre-sale Dark Ages. She lays on the horn and waits. Shane's got to get to work herself, so she's like a little peeved when she has to go inside. More peeved when she realizes that Cheryl isn't even there. If she was going to, like, catch a ride or not go or not be there, like, a heads up would have been nice. But now Shane is running late, so she kind of just, like, scoots without giving it much more thought. At least not until she gets a call at work that morning at around 10 a.m.

2:13And it's a friend and a co-worker of Cheryl's, and she wants to know where Cheryl is because she just hasn't shown. And that's when Shane's stomach drops. Although she's not quite sure why. Because she knows that Cheryl was out the night before with her new boyfriend, Andy Atkinson. Like Shane had actually been out with them too. She dipped around 11 to give the lovebirds some like time alone, some space. So in her mind, the most likely scenario is that her sister just overslept or something. But still, Shane can't kick this uneasy feeling. So she actually asks for permission to leave work early.

2:48She's told no, though, which I feel like is pretty messed up, like if you think your sister is missing. And before long, like the whole family knows what's going on. The whole family is worried. And Shane just wants to join Cheryl's friends and family who are already out there looking for her. So girl is out the door the second her shift is up, racing to the family home where her mom Barbara and her stepdad Dan are waiting anxiously. Now, by now, hours have passed since everyone has realized that Cheryl was missing. But where's Andy? Well, so that's the thing. no one can find Andy either. And by the time Shane gets home, she is ready to break glass.

3:24Like, look guys, we need to call the cops. Something is wrong. And Barbara doesn't need convincing. So the police are called and a missing persons report is filed. And then Shane is like right back out the door, ready to hit the city streets with Cheryl's friends, searching for the couple and for Andy's white Honda, which they were in the night before. But nearly four hours later, they are no closer to finding them. So Shane's heart skips a beat when she walks back in and sees her mom on the phone looking worried. And she can only hear one side of the conversation, but it feels bad. It's like, yes, yes, that's my daughter.

4:00Where are you? We'll come right now. After what feels like an eternity, Barbara hangs up and announces that it was a security guard on the phone. And I guess this guy works for a local food distributor. And he called because he found Cheryl's purse with her number inside. And it was on the floorboard of an abandoned white Honda. So this place that they go to, it's this really undeveloped area near the Cisco office. The Cisco is the building the security guard worked at. And it's on this dark, desolate street, which is known to people because it's known as Lovers Lane. And it also runs along this big open field leading into a big wooded area.

4:40And it's popular with young locals for obvious in-the-name reasons. And Shane says that it doesn't strike her as super weird that the couple would have gone there. I mean, they're both living with family. 22-year-old Cheryl with her mom, her stepdad, and her little Brady Bunch-like kind of family. And 21-year-old Andy, who is new to Houston, he's living with his grandmother. So in less than two weeks, Cheryl was actually planning on moving in with Shane. Like, they were going to move in together. But until then, privacy was a hot commodity. So heading out to Lover's Lane checks out for the couple.

5:11But what the guard hadn't found anywhere near the car was Cheryl or Andy. So the security guy is like, what, rummaging through a random car he found? Like that feels weird to me. I thought the same thing, but Shane actually gave us a rundown of the day and it makes a little more sense the way that she explains that. I guess the guard had found the car for the first time, like way earlier in the day on his rounds, but he wasn't concerned. Until it was still there. Hours later, right. And so that's when he decided to check it out. and the windows were rolled down, the seats were reclined, and the key was in the ignition in the idle position.

5:48Those are all very bad signs. Right, red flags, which is why he called them. So that's the scene when Cheryl's family and friends start showing up, desperate to find some sign of the missing couple. And right away, they zero in on some cigarette butts, stained with lipstick on the ground near the car. The lipstick looks a whole lot like it was Cheryl's. And when they peek inside the car, they see something that the security guard hadn't mentioned. Something more ominous than lipstick stains on cigarette butts. They see deep, dark stains on the inside of the driver's door. Blood? They're not sure, but it looks an awful lot like blood.

6:31So much so that they do a kind of like back away slowly kind of thing. Like the last thing they want to do is contaminate what could be evidence. But how did the security guard miss that? I mean, wasn't he in the car? Well, in this area, there are no streetlights and it's dark by now. So my guess is that the headlights from all the cars that are now there from everyone who came, maybe is making it easier to see. They also probably are like bringing lights in. I don't know. Whatever they have is definitely more light than like a lone patrol car would have provided. And Andy's car battery is dead from the car being left in idle.

7:05So there probably were no overhead lights like at the time. Now, in 1990, no one has a cell to call 911. And by the time they see all of this, the security guard is like on the other side of that big field, walking the tree line with one of Cheryl's friends. They're just like searching over there. So Shane races to the Cisco building with Cheryl's best friend where they ask the front desk person to call 911. And then they wait and wait and wait for like 30 or 40 minutes. But no one shows up. What? No cops, no first responders, no fire trucks, nada. So the girls have to actually go back and have them call 911 a second time.

7:43And this time, the response is immediate and overwhelming. A response like, oh, there are two missing kids in a bloody car. Like that, yeah. So this army of cops and first responders get to work. They search with helicopters up in the sky. They have scent tracking canines on the ground, like the works. And a little after 11 p.m., Shane watches a scene unfold. And she told us that to this day, it like plays out in her mind. It is pure chaos. There's just so many people bustling around. She was like walking up to her dad in a daze when out of the corner of her eye, she sees an officer say something to her mom.

8:22And then she just hears this blood curdling scream. And to Shane, it looks like the officer like catches her mom from falling when she howls. And it's like there are no words. It's just these like guttural, primal shrieks. And Barbara actually says later in reporting for KHOU 11 that the officer holding her up is also holding her back from running towards the area across the field where there's just this like sudden flurry of activity. And Shane can't even process it all. She turns to ask her dad what's wrong, like what happened, why is everyone so upset all of a sudden? And I don't know if he's been briefed or if he's just like putting two and two together.

8:59but he responds with the last two words that Shane is prepared to hear. She's gone. And in the blink of an eye, investigators surround them, like corralling them towards their car saying like, listen, we're so sorry, but like you have to leave now. This is a crime scene. And the entire family is thinking like, how? How can they leave Cheryl out there? But they don't have a choice. So they go and investigators have to get to work. Jill Tyra reported for Wilmington Morningstar that Cheryl's body had been found by a scent tracking dog about 200 yards from Andy's car, just barely into the wooded area past the field.

9:38When she's found, she's naked, lying face down on the ground, and her hands are actually bound behind her back with rope. And she has what looks like jagged wounds to her head and her neck, and her throat has been slashed. And her killer, it seems, made a half-hearted attempt to conceal her body under some pieces of, like, wood from this, like, rotting fence. And then they find her clothes nearby, a single$20 bill as well. Her pretty turquoise summer dress with, like, red accents had actually been cut from her body. And Shane thinks maybe her underwear had been, too, she told us. Which suggests to investigators that whatever horrors Cheryl had been met with probably involved a sexual assault.

10:21Now, at this time that they find Cheryl, there's still no sign of Andy. Though, as they secure the scene and get Cheryl to the morgue, searching for him does continue. But by the wee hours of the morning, they decide they need to break till sunrise. This is all absolute torture for Andy's dad, Garland. He got to the scene not long before Cheryl's body was found, and he, like, set out walking the tree line, too, only to be hustled away, almost without explanation. Garland passed away actually recently in October of 2024. But I found this interview he did with Linda Sheldon Fell for a series that she hosts called Moments of Hope.

10:57And when he's talking to her, he gets choked up because he talks about this HPD officer who actually asked to stay at the scene until the search could pick back up at sunrise. and he explains that at the first hint of daylight, that officer starts walking the same tree line that Garland walked multiple times the night before, taking things in, looking for anything that might have been missed in the dark. I mean, looking for Andy. And out there all alone, it's that officer who stumbles on this grisly scene because there Andy is, sitting at the base of this enormous tree tied to the tree with rope.

11:35His legs, like, stretch out in front of him, and he's facing the woods. And like Cheryl, his throat was slit so deeply, though, that he was nearly decapitated. When I hear all of that, my mind instantly goes to, like— Like, the Lake Waco, if not, right? Yeah. I thought the same thing. And listen, for anyone who hasn't listened to our Lake Waco episode, so it was, like, a two-parter that we did recently. I'll try and link out to it in the notes or whatever. But I agree. It's got some, like, eerie similarities to this case. Like, the second I heard about Andy, that's what I thought about. But you got to think about this.

12:08No one at the time is thinking there's a possibility of a connection because by the time Cheryl and Andy were murdered, they already had people in prison for the Lake Waco case. I was going to ask about the timing. Right. Now, knowing what I know now, to me, that means nothing. But back then, no one is screaming serial killer. But to go back to Andy, and we can touch on this, the Waco stuff maybe later. Andy's fully clothed. His hands are bound behind his back. And where the injuries to Cheryl's neck were kind of like jagged and imprecise, I guess Andy's throat had just like one clean slash. And how far is he from where Cheryl was found?

12:46I don't know exactly. I've seen like everything from like 75 yards to 150 yards. I don't know for sure. What I do know is that Jill Tire's report says there aren't any obvious defensive wounds on Andy. It says the same about Cheryl, actually. But we actually reviewed both autopsy reports. And I don't think that's actually accurate for her. Like, girl went down fighting. And there's this weird thing about the crime scene that I haven't mentioned. I'm not sure when investigators notice it, like, before or after Andy's body is found, I mean. But reporting for KHOU 11 says that a golf club and golf balls from Andy's car had been, like, laid out in the field in, like, this line that was pointing to Cheryl's body.

13:30which to me is just like extremely weird and clearly like someone wanted them to be found. Yeah. Now I think it's helpful at this point if we talk through the scene in terms of like likely series of events because spoiler alert answers are hard to come by in the coming years and there's not a ton of reporting on how it all would have unfolded. The broad strokes are this. The thinking is that there's some kind of blitz attack when the two are in the car And somehow they're then taken to the tree that Andy was tied to. So theoretically, it could have just been one guy, but my money is on two. That's something that investigators are going to debate for years.

14:10It could be either, I think. Again, I think the thing that's clear is that it started with the attack on Andy in the car because of all the blood that's on the door. Either they would have had to hurt him enough to, like, prove a point. Like, I'm not messing around. Follow me. Cooperate. I have a weapon. Like, I'm going to walk you out. or maybe Andy was fully incapacitated by whatever happened to him in the car, which to me, that definitely means you would need multiple people to get him out to the tree and keep Cheryl cooperating. One way or another, their hands get tied behind their back. Remember, Andy doesn't have defensive wounds.

14:47So either he's cooperating because, again, there's a threat to her Cheryl or him, or he's incapacitated and can't even fight back. And then Cheryl either makes a run for it and they catch up to her or they walk her to a different area. But when they get her over there, they cut off her clothes, assault her and kill her there where she was found. According to reporting for KHOU 11, investigators tell Garland that they do think for some reason that she was killed first. I don't know their reasoning. That's never fully explained, but that's the theory. Did they get any biologics from the autopsies?

15:19Like anything that they can get DNA from? Yes and yes. Even though 1990 is super early for DNA science, the detective who works this case the longest, this guy named Detective Billy Belk, he knows what a powerful tool DNA is shaping up to be. So from like day one, he asked the higher ups to have evidence processed at this special lab that has the tech to detect DNA. Which has to be a long shot and super expensive. Expensive, right. You're not wrong. But you know the saying, you miss 100 % of the shots you don't take. so Detective Belk decides to shoot his, and it works. He gets the okay, the lab hits pay dirt, they're able to build a suspect profile from the semen in Cheryl, but downside of early days DNA, no database.

16:06There's nothing to compare it to. Right. No amount of evidence is going to replace the grueling work of boots on the ground investigating. So detectives start interviewing family and friends, and they start working their way out from there. Now, neither family knows of anyone who would want to hurt Cheryl or Andy. They're both really good kids. They weren't wrapped up in anything shady, and everyone loved them. But Cheryl's loved ones do offer up a couple of names that pique detectives' interest. Let's call them Lance and Aaron. So Lance is the boyfriend of a friend that Cheryl had been kind of on the outs with recently.

16:42Dude, like, I guess skipped town the morning after Cheryl was found. More than the town, he skipped the whole country, like took off for St. Lucia. And it seems like this was no planned holiday either. Lance's girlfriend tells him that she didn't even know anything about this trip. Like he didn't even mention that he was going to go to St. Lucia. What? Yeah. So when detectives end up reaching him on the island, he agrees to come back to Houston. He sits down for an interview. And when they ask him for a DNA sample, he's cool with that too. When the comparison gets run, Lance is ruled out. He's not their guy.

17:15Which leads me to Aaron, who, ironically enough, is the kid of a cop. Or maybe a former cop, not totally sure. He is Cheryl's ex from, like, middle school and high school. And he doesn't share Lance's cooperative spirit. I'm not sure if he officially lawyers up or if he talks to investigators or any of that. All I know is that when they ask him for a DNA sample, he refuses. Doesn't give a reason, just no. Shane told us that the cop dad is straight up offended that they even would ask. So there's that. She also told us this weird story about Aaron showing up at their house, like the day after Cheryl died and kind of just standing there, like at the end of their driveway, like didn't say a word, didn't come any closer, just stood there.

18:05That's so weird and kind of creepy. Detectives think so too. So does Barbara. Shane said she actually kind of got it. She told us she always liked Aaron. He'd always been decent to her sister. And she's like, I think he was in shock, like kind of like the rest of us. The standoff between detectives and Aaron over his DNA, this goes on for years. And like on the one hand, totally his right. But on the other hand, like you got to know this is going to look bad. And what are you hiding? Why not give your DNA? Right. Because of all the male friends and acquaintances that they approach during their investigation in these years, and there are a lot, he is the only one who won't give a sample.

18:48And they're not getting hits on anyone else that they're testing. And so for years, everyone is side-eyeing this guy. But you can't hide forever. Though in a lot of cases we've covered, actually, you can. But it's very frustrating. But not here. Not with this case. Detectives again, years later, finally get a warrant for Aaron's DNA. Hopes are high that they're about to solve this case that has haunted the city once and for all. When the results come back, everyone is probably holding their breath. But Aaron is not a match. Okay, but if there was more than one killer... That's a big if, isn't it?

19:32And to state the obvious, that same logic applies then to all the men who have been ruled out like so far through DNA comparison. Like unless you've got an airtight alibi or something, which I'm sure some of them do, but I don't have insight into any of that. Who was ruled out through alibi? Who had an alibi when their DNA was ruled out? I don't know. All I know is at some point in the 90s, the suspect profile does get entered into CODIS when CODIS becomes a thing, but there are no hits in CODIS. And that activity on the case, it kind of just like ebbs and flows then throughout the years. Like it picks up a little bit in the mid-90s when a reward is announced, but like nothing happens.

20:11It's just like dead end after dead end. And in all this time, there are no like really viable suspects. No, like that's what makes this case so challenging. It truly felt completely random. Like this killer blew into town, committed one of the most heinous crimes these officers would see in their careers, and then was gone before the sun came up, never to return again. Or at least that's how it seemed for many years. But one day, in early 2001, detectives get this very strange letter in the mail. And it's addressed to HPD, but the return address says Cheryl Henry and Andy Atkinson. No address, but I'm going to have you read it for us because, I mean, this is wild.

20:54The letter says,

21:24Anonymous. But it's weird, right? Please tell me they play along with this, though. They do. They do exactly as they're told. They publish their reply in the Houston Chronicle, basically like, we hear you. We want to play ball. Tell us what to do next kind of thing. Yeah. They keep all of this on the down low. Like, the public doesn't know a thing about this letter at the time. So, like, even when they publish their reply, the public, like, doesn't even know what they're looking for or to look for it. But when they publish this, it's just radio silence. They never hear from that letter writer again.

21:57They even try having the envelope process to like see if there's DNA or fingerprints, whatever. That's a dead end too. And the case is more than 10 years cold by this point. And once again, like after this letter, when this leads nowhere, like they're out of leads. Now, I haven't touched on this yet, but Detective Belk, remember, he has been on this case from like day one. Over the years, he builds a super solid relationship with Cheryl's family. And what are solid relationships based on? Trust. How do you earn trust? Transparency. And that's what he's been giving them. Like, he doesn't share anything that could jeopardize the investigation, of course, but he has been keeping them in the loop, step by grueling step, which has given them, like, all along this sense of, like, yes, Cheryl's case is actually being actively worked by one of the best.

22:45Yes, which is, like, what so many families want. And in all honesty, this case is like his great white whale and he really wants to solve it before he retires. And, you know, because of all this transparency that he was giving them, Shane actually shared a 2005 email chain with us. It was between them and Detective Belk or Detective Belk and Barbara. And in this, Detective Belk lists out all of the men who have been excluded based on the DNA evidence, which at that time was 17 names deep. He even assures them that in this list, the infamous railroad killer, Rafael Resendez, has been ruled out thanks to CODIS.

23:23Now, just for clarification, like, no one has placed this guy in Houston at the time of the murders as far as I know. But, like, I know he was in the state in July of 91 when he killed a man in San Antonio. And that's, like, three and a half hours away from Houston. But, like, duh, he's the railroad killer. Right, like, dude got around. I don't have any context about, like, how or why or when he slid on, like, the investigation's radar. So, giant grain of salt here. I was just, like, I was surprised to see his name on that list. I thought it was worth mentioning. But here's his name of people who are ruled out.

23:55They're obviously trying. They're working hard. By 2007, though, Detective Belk has come to terms with the fact that his dreams of solving the case before he retires actually might elude him. He's been with HPD by that point for 20 years. And, like, it's his time. So he turns in his badge and gun, admitting this kind of defeat for him, like his great white whale got away. But to be a fly on the wall when his phone rings the very next week and he's told that this could be it. They finally got a hit in CODIS after all these years, except there's always an except, right? The hit isn't a person that they've linked to his case.

24:40They've linked his case to another case. A brutal, like with a capital B, sexual assault case also there in Houston. So this guy is still there. Not so fast. The sexual assault wasn't recent. In fact, it happened two months before Cheryl and Andy were killed. I'm sorry, the backlog is that deep? I have no idea why, but the victim's sexual assault kit was never processed for 17 years. I was going to say for almost decades. Yes. And it wasn't the only one sitting untested either. I mean, far from it, although that's like a whole other podcast. Now, the good news in this, though, is the victim in that sexual assault case was still alive when detectives went and tracked her down in Galveston County.

25:30Her story is, so basically she got off work as a dancer at a club at around two o 'clock in the morning, one morning in June of 1990. According to reporting by Lindsay Wise in the Houston Chronicle, she was staying at her pilot boyfriend's place and he was off like flying a plane somewhere. So she came home to an empty house apartment, whatever, or at least it should have been empty. So she walks in, kicks off her shoes, has a bite to eat downstairs and then heads upstairs to go to bed. And that's when this man lunged out at her from a dark room. I mean, it is the stuff of actual nightmares. And here, I think the best thing to do is just have you read an account from Wise's reporting.

26:09The man wore a fishnet stocking over his face, black gloves, and a dark shirt and pants that matched, possibly a uniform. He held a long-barreled handgun in his left hand. Where's Randy, he asked, referring to her boyfriend by name. He taunted her, putting the gun to her head and cocking it. He bound her hands behind her back with gray duct tape before taking cash from her purse. Then he duct taped her eyes and mouth shut, threw her on the bed, and shoved a bag or pillowcase over her head. When the whole thing was over, he forced her down onto the floor and told her that she better stay there because he might be gone in minutes, he might not be, and it would be bad for her basically if she like got up while he was still there.