Hughes Springs

By now, investigators were aware that he'd killed eight people and were still looking into whether there may be even more.

The unsolved murder of an 87-year-old woman named Leafy Mason in Hugh Springs, Texas, was high on their list of potential victims.

At one of the task force meetings, we had a police officer from Hughes Springs, where Leafy Mason was murdered.

They took out the complete window frame where the suspect in their case made entry, and they preserved it as evidence.

By late 1998, things escalated.

In October, 87-year-old Leafy Mason was murdered in Hughes Springs, Texas.

Two months later, Dr. Claudia Benton was sexually assaulted and killed near tracks outside of Houston.

In April of 1999, Reverend Norman Cernick and his wife Karen were murdered in their Weimar, Texas, church.

Yeah.

On October 4th, 1998, in Hughes Springs, Texas, 87-year-old Leafy Mason was found murdered in her home that sat just a few feet from railroad tracks.

She was beaten to death with an antique iron after he entered her house through a window.

So he literally just picked up, like, an old metal, like, heavy iron.