Solved cold cases in Oklahoma
1 documented case.
Erma Jean Goodou
Erma Jean Goodou, a 32-year-old mother, was beaten to death inside her home in the 800 block of East 51st Place North in Tulsa, Oklahoma, early on July 30, 1994, after an intruder broke in through a window in what authorities described as a break-in and attempted rape. Her 13-year-old daughter found her body in the kitchen. Investigators collected fingerprints and DNA at the scene, but no match was found, and the case went cold for nearly two decades. In 2012 Tulsa detectives submitted the crime-scene DNA to the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation under a cold case grant, and in 2014 it matched a sample that the Texas Department of Public Safety had taken from Leroy Edward Gilbert Jr. after an unrelated arrest. Gilbert, who had lived within a mile of Goodou and said he had attended high school with her, was arrested in Bonham, Texas, in 2015. A Tulsa County jury convicted him of first-degree murder on September 21, 2017, and recommended life without parole; he was sentenced in November 2017, and the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals affirmed the conviction and life sentence in April 2019.