Solved cold cases in Louisiana
3 documented cases.
Amber Lynn Jenkins Garcia
Amber Lynn Jenkins Garcia, a 20-year-old woman described by police as a daughter and a mother, was found dead on October 8, 1998, in a wooded area behind Youngs Park on Youngs Road in Morgan City, Louisiana. Her killing went cold despite an initial investigation. At the beginning of 2024, Morgan City Police Department detectives resubmitted evidence collected from the scene to the Acadiana Criminalistics Lab, where advances in DNA analysis linked the evidence to John Willis Pittman Jr. Pittman was already incarcerated at Elayn Hunt Correctional Center, serving a 40-year sentence after pleading guilty to manslaughter in the December 25, 1998 death of a second Morgan City woman, Jennifer Vedol. On October 30, 2024, investigators obtained an arrest warrant and Pittman was booked on November 6, 2024 on a charge of second-degree murder in Garcia's death, more than 26 years after the homicide. The case remains pending in the 16th Judicial District Court.
Courtney Coco
Courtney Coco, 19, a criminal investigation major at Northwestern State University, was last seen at her home in Alexandria, Louisiana, in early October 2004. On October 4 her body was found in an abandoned building near Winnie, Texas, about 200 miles away. Her car and phone were missing. The pathologist ruled the death a homicide by undetermined means, with a mechanism indicative of asphyxiation. DNA on her trunk latch matched a former partner of hers, no usable fingerprints were found, and the case went cold. In 2011 people came forward with statements David Anthony Burns had made about killing her, but a detective said there was no other hard evidence. In 2019 a podcast, Real Life Real Crime, released an 18-episode series on the case, and its host turned his findings over to Alexandria police. Her family later credited him with solving it; the district attorney declined to discuss what the podcast contributed. A detective assigned in 2018 found a Texas case file naming a witness who had seen a car with Louisiana plates back out of the building the night before the body was found, and that witness picked Burns, who had been engaged to Coco's sister, from a lineup. Burns was indicted and arrested on April 13, 2021. A jury convicted him of second-degree murder on October 31, 2022, he received life without parole, and the Third Circuit affirmed in December 2023.
Mary Horton Vail
Mary Horton Vail, 22, died on October 28, 1962, in the Calcasieu River in Louisiana, while on a boat with her husband, Felix Vail. He told police she had fallen overboard while they were setting trotlines. He was arrested and held for three nights, but the death was ruled an accidental drowning and no charge followed. Vail later moved to California with their son. Two other women linked to him vanished: his girlfriend Sharon Hensley in 1973 and his wife Annette Craver Vail in 1984. In 2010 Annette's mother contacted Jerry Mitchell, an investigative reporter at The Clarion-Ledger in Jackson, Mississippi. His series ran in November 2012 and quoted a pathologist who said the autopsy photographs indicated homicide. Calcasieu Parish authorities reopened the case, coroner Terry Welke classified the death a homicide, and Vail, then 73, was arrested in Canyon Lake, Texas, in May 2013. The jury at his 2016 trial in Lake Charles was allowed to hear about the two missing women. On August 12, 2016, it convicted him of second-degree murder after deliberating for less than an hour, and he was sentenced to life in prison. The conviction was upheld on appeal in 2017 and 2018. Vail has not been charged in the other disappearances.