Texas Cold Case: Missing Girl’s Body Found On Her 8th Birthday
Elizabeth Barclay was abducted on October 23, 1979, as she walked with her younger brother and a friend to the store in Dallas, Texas, according to Texas DPS.
According to a newspaper report, she was running an errand for her mom. Perhaps it's cases like these that have caused parents to stop sending their seven-year-olds on walks unattended.
Elizabeth would be found on the side of a rural road a couple of months later, on what would have been her eighth birthday.
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What The Children Saw
The children reported that a black man stopped them about a block away from Elizabeth's family apartment at 9620 Starlight and exposed himself to them. They described him as being in his 30s, stocky, and with full sideburns.
They also described his vehicle as a 1974 dark-colored 2-door Buick. They said the man grabbed Elizabeth and threatened to drown her. The area is less than a mile from Bachman Lake.
If you're wondering how two witnesses younger than 7 years old remembered those types of details during a very quick and extremely traumatic experience, you are not alone. It's entirely possible they got some things wrong.
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The vehicle description may be accurate- an adult watching the incident from a window said he saw a man hitting "something" repeatedly in the back seat of the vehicle.
We take for granted many of the tools and resources we have now to help us solve crimes.
If this had happened this year, there's no doubt some of the incidents would have been caught on nearby surveillance cameras. Elizabeth would have likely had a phone that investigators could have tracked.
And DNA technology as we know it was practically nonexistent. So this case went ice cold and has remained so for 45 years.
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Now the best anyone can hope for is that someone who knows something will come forward with information that could bring justice for Elizabeth.
Texas Crime Stoppers is offering a cash reward of up to $3,000 to any person who provides information that leads to the arrest of the person/persons responsible for this crime. To be eligible for the cash rewards, tipsters MUST call the Crime Stoppers hotline at 1-800-252-TIPS (8477). All tips are anonymous. Tipsters will be provided a tip number instead of using a name.
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