Linda Jane Phillips

Status:

Open

Jurisdiction:

Kaufman County Sheriffs Office (TX)

Offense Location:

Richardson, Texas

Summary:

Linda Jane Phillips was a 26-year-old schoolteacher who vanished on August 8, 1970, while driving home from a Dallas wedding party. Two days later, her mutilated body was discovered in a hedgerow near Post Oak, Texas. The murder remains officially unsolved.

Vital Statistics

Circumstances of Offense:

Linda Jane Phillips, daughter of Kaufman County School Superintendent Jimmy Phillips, vanished while driving home from a Dallas wedding party in August 1970. The last reliable sighting of Linda alive was at the Dallas wedding party near Cedar Springs Road just after 2:30 a.m. on early Sunday, August 9, 1970. Investigators found her car abandoned along Farm Road 1641, its window shattered, her clothing scattered along the roadside for nearly a mile. Her mutilated body was discovered in a hedgerow near Post Oak, Texas. She sustained twenty-six stab wounds and had been sexually abused.

Additional Details:

Despite hundreds of volunteers searching and an intensive investigation led by Sheriff Roy Brockway, no suspect was found. The Richardson Independent School District, where Linda had taught, put up a five thousand dollars reward. The account was opened at First Bank and Trust in Richardson. Over the following decade, a wave of similarly brutal killings of women swept across North and East Texas. Lawmen speculated about a single "lust killer" operating around Dallas, connecting Linda's death to others in Garland, Irving, Plano, and Grapevine. A construction worker named Edward Lee Staggs was questioned and ultimately arrested. Officers recovered a switchblade and took a statement. By late January 1973, Sheriff Brockway told the press that a lie detector indicated Staggs was not implicated in the 1970 Kaufman County murder. Staggs later pleaded guilty in the Midget case and received a forty-five year sentence. In 1984, serial confessor Henry Lee Lucas pleaded guilty to Linda's killing. Kaufman County briefly marked the case "cleared." But Lucas's confession later fell apart. Records showed he was still in Michigan at the time of her death. Lucas eventually recanted most of his confessions in the years that followed. The rest of the admissions, including Linda's, generally collapse under scrutiny.

Case Last Updated:

Jul 08, 2026