An unsolved murder case being worked by the Memphis Police Department’s cold case detectives is the murder of a teenager almost 49 years ago. One angle investigators are looking at is the possibility she was one victim of a serial killer.
Now an extraordinary $30,000 award from the family and CrimeStoppers has been posted in the hope someone still alive with information on the case might come forward.
Johnson’s body was found by firefighters near Y&MV Road and Weaver Street October 16, 1974, as they extinguished a brush fire in southwest Memphis. Police believe she was killed elsewhere — she was stabbed in the face and the chest — and her body dumped in a field near YMV and Fields Roads and Hickey Street, an area still nearly abandoned as it was in 1974. The killer then used an accelerant to start a fire.
The bodies of three other young women were found in the same general areas near Boxtown and Westwood from late 1974 to early 1975. In each case, the women were killed somewhere else and their bodies were dumped.
The decomposed remains of Julia Ann Perry-Gilliland, 25, was discovered December 4, 1974. The medical examiner couldn’t determine how she died.
The body of Unis Maria Houston, 26, was found in a field near the dead end of Honduras Street January 5, 1975. She died of a gunshot wound. And Ludionia Collins’ body was lying in a drainage ditch at Calvin and Weaver March 14, 1975. She had been stabbed in the heart.
None of the cases — similar in many respects — was ever solved.
Detectives have combed through old records and canvassed homes in the rural part of south Memphis. They believe that people who knew Gloria Johnson — and perhaps the others — are still alive today. They hope someone with information will call CrimeStoppers at (901) 528-CASH, or the Cold Case Bureau, (901) 636-3300 to speak with a detective.
The Johnson family has twice posted money with CrimeStoppers this past year. They now have put $28,000 in a special account for awards. That, along with the $2,000 available in murder cases from CrimeStoppers, takes the special award to $30,000. It is the biggest award currently available.
Read more about the Gloria Johnson case and other cold case homicides, assaults and rapes here.
Murder solved after half a century
in Vermont thanks to new DNA analysis
While it may seem next to impossible to solve a crime from half a century ago, it happens fairly ofren in jurisdictions across the country.
More than 50 years after a young woman’s roommate found her friend strangled in her room, the Rita Curran case in Burlington, Vermont was solved this month. DNA found on a cigarette butt and on the victim’s clothing helped investigators identify a man.
The man had died of a drug overdose 12 years after the murder but at least the case has been solved and closure given to the woman’s family.
In that cold case, a detectives decided to treat it as if it was a recent murder and opened case files to a team of police investigators.
