DNA links convict to '82 slaying in Fort Worth

FORT WORTH -- A convicted burglar who was scheduled to be released from a Florida prison next week is facing new accusations in Fort Worth that he raped and strangled a 23-year-old medical student almost 25 years ago.

Lucky Odom, who had previously been sentenced to five years' probation in Tarrant County for the 1981 rape of a Fort Worth woman, was identified as a suspect in the 1982 death of Kathryn Munroe after a database linked his DNA to evidence in the case, police said.

The link has brought some relief to Munroe's family but outrage to Odom's rape victim, who said the man shouldn't have been on the streets to harm another woman.

"He shouldn't have ever been released," the woman said in an interview with the Star-Telegram. "He should have been kept behind bars for years. No telling how many people he's probably hurt or killed."

The Star-Telegram typically does not identify accusers in sexual-assault cases.

The slaying victim

A school custodian found Munroe's body on the afternoon of Aug. 19, 1982, while picking up trash at North Hi Mount Elementary School, 3801 W. Seventh St.

Her body was clad in a black blouse with her bra stretched over her right shoulder. Jogging shorts and underwear were found nearby.

At the time of her death, Munroe -- an honors graduate from Texas Lutheran College in Seguin -- had just begun her second year at the Texas College of Osteopathic Medicine.

"There's really not a day that goes by that we don't think of what might have been if that had not happened," said her father, George Munroe of Corpus Christi.

"You can hardly watch television without a drama or actual news of a similar occurrence. You have constant reminders. I guess we have mixed emotions about this. It doesn't bring her back, but it does bring some closure to it."

DNA evidence

Munroe lived less than a block from the school where her body was found.

Her roommate told investigators that Munroe had apparently received a phone call about 10:30 the night before she was found dead, Sgt. J.D. Thornton said. The roommate told police she did not hear the phone conversation or even realize that Munroe later left the home.

"There were no signs of any forced entry or struggle inside the house," Thornton said. "The roommate obviously could have heard such a struggle but didn't."

Thornton said police do not know whether the call was related to Munroe's death but believe the victim willingly left the house on foot sometime after, leaving her car in the driveway.

"We're still trying to figure out the relationship, if any, between the victim and Odom," Thornton said. "There are no friends of the victim that we have talked to that knew Odom."

Thornton said Odom had not surfaced as a suspect until recently. Police were alerted that the Combined DNA Index System, or CODIS, database, which compares DNA profiles of convicted felons with biological evidence from unsolved crimes, had matched semen found in Munroe's body to Odom.

Odom is in the Apalachee Correctional Institution, East Unit, in Sneads, Fla., for burglary of a structure and trafficking in stolen property and was scheduled to be released next week. Instead, he will remain in prison and faces extradition to Fort Worth.

Now investigators plan to compare Odom's DNA and fingerprints with evidence from the unsolved slayings of several young women who died in the mid-1980s in the Fort Worth area.

"We can't eliminate him from being in this area during a period when several women were murdered," Thornton said. "We'll be comparing evidence from those cases to Odom, and we've been in contact with other police agencies around the country where we've known him to have lived."

Rape conviction

Seven months before Munroe's death, Odom had pleaded guilty to the rape of a female acquaintance in exchange for a five-year probated sentence.

The rape victim said she was working as a clerk at a convenience store when she met Odom, then an employee with the Texas Vending Co., who came to the store to collect money from vending machines.

Months after they met, the woman said, she asked Odom to pass along her number and address to a mutual friend with whom she was trying to get back in touch.

That same day, she said, Odom showed up at her apartment uninvited. She said she tried to get him to leave, lying that her brother was on the way, but he would not go.

"I remember him grabbing me by my neck, squeezing it very tight," the woman said. "I had a big picture window. I looked out. I was hoping someone would walk by and see and help me."

She said Odom closed the blinds and, despite her pleas that he leave, forced her into a bedroom and raped her, covering her face with a pillow to drown out her cries.

"Before he left, he told me, 'I know where you live and I got your name and I know where you work. I will kill you if you report this to anyone or to police,'" she said.

The woman said she immediately called her mother and reported the rape to police, even going to a hospital to undergo a rape exam.

According to court documents, Odom was arrested in June 1981 in connection with the case but told officials that the sex was consensual. He remained in the Tarrant County Jail until the plea bargain was reached in January 1982.

In February 1983, prosecutors filed a petition to revoke Odom's probation after he repeatedly failed to meet with his probation officer or pay court costs.

An arrest warrant was issued for Odom, but records show it was not executed until 15 years later when, in December 1998, he was arrested in Ogden City, Utah.

He was brought back to Texas that same month and remained incarcerated in the Tarrant County Jail until Jan. 27, 1999, records show. Two days later, his community supervision was administratively closed, records show.

'A really dangerous man'

The rape victim said she was told by the prosecutor assigned to her case that Odom had been released because the case was not strong enough and she was not a good enough witness. She said she learned in a recent interview with cold-case Detective Manny Reyes that, in actuality, Odom had been given five years' probation as part of a plea bargain.

"I wouldn't have taken it," the woman said. "I would have said, 'No, let's go and put him behind bars.' He was a really dangerous man.

"He had eyes you would never forget. I could never forget his eyes."

The woman said she wasn't surprised when she heard that Odom had been linked through DNA to evidence from a rape and slaying.

"I figured I would see his face somewhere, somehow in the news again, because I knew that he would probably do it again," she said. "If he did it to me, he's going to do it to someone else."

But the woman said she regrets not fighting prosecutors more in 1982 about their handling of her rape case. If she had done so, she wonders, would Munroe still be alive?

"I've been crying a lot about the girl and her family," she said. "If I would have known to fight back and do something more to have something done about it back then, she would have still been alive today, so I kind of blame myself a little. I was just so young. I didn't know what to do."

HOW TO HELP

Anyone who may have known Kathryn Munroe or Lucky Odom around the time of the 1982 slaying is asked to call Fort Worth police Detective Manny Reyes at 817-392-4307.