No Reason to Kill
the search for Sheila Elrod's killer
by Russell S. Smith
Copyright 2008
Prologue
On February 12, 1980, twenty-year-old Sheila Elrod was killed during a jewelry store robbery in San Angelo. Texas. This beautiful girl had a never-met-a-stranger personality and a reputation for treating others as equals. Her murder shocked this West Texas community like none other before it.
Crimes like this were not supposed to happen in San Angelo, a city where residents even today often say hello to strangers, or wave at them. It is a city with a small town atmosphere, probably due to being bypassed by major Interstate highways and perhaps due to people with a strong work ethic and ingrained values of God-country-family and community. The city, with a population of 73,000 at the time the girl died, has long been described as one of the best-kept secrets in Texas.
Police officers had rushed to the scene, gathered evidence, canvassed the area for witnesses and set upon investigating the crime. Unidentified blood was splattered all over broken glass-top jewelry cases and police detectives thought it was only a matter of time before they would find the killer. Little did they know that it would be more than two decades before anyone would ever be brought to justice.
Detectives eliminated persons of interest day after day, month after month and year after year. Rumors flew about the town; was it an inside job, was it someone she knew, do the police really know who did it and just don’t have enough evidence? The stories and calls to the police were rampant for years. Detectives followed leads that led near and far, but the case finally grew cold. The case became a compilation of many boxes and files about individuals that ultimately had nothing to do with the death of Sheila Elrod.
Television shows today might make a person think that every crime should be solved within thirty minutes or an hour. Real police work involves following the evidence, pounding the pavement, checking records, eliminating persons of interest and using what technology you have at the time to solve a crime. It was not until many years later that Jerry Byrne, a persistent Texas Ranger assisted by Detective Sean Richey, would use DNA technology to identify a suspect.
A sealed indictment was finally issued in the death of Sheila Elrod. After the arrest, and before another man was implicated, the investigators interviewed this writer, a former police officer (retired police chief) who had searched for the killer for years. Almost from the day the crime happened, this writer had an internal passion about finding the unknown assailant; it was this passion that led to the research and production of this nonfiction book entitled No Reason to Kill.
This work would not have been possible were it not for Sheila Elrod’s family; wonderful people who provided photographs and biographical information about their family, daughter and sister. The research involved literally dozens of interviews, thousands of miles traveled and the collection and dissection of newspapers, photographs and police, court and prison records. The man finally convicted in the case was interviewed several times in his prison unit near Wichita Falls.
The day the murder happened, this writer said to his wife, “This type of thing may happen in big cities, but it’s not supposed to happen in San Angelo.” Unfortunately, even San Angelo was not immune from the influences of the outside world.
It was a time when national and worldwide events, including decisions to try to strengthen the U.S. dollar, Russia invading Afghanistan and tensions between Iran and Iraq, showed up in the form of higher prices for oil, gasoline and precious metals. Gold, for example, rose from an official U.S. price of $38 per ounce in 1972 until it peaked at $850 per ounce in January 1980.[i] It was years before another effect of those decisions showed up in a report entitled ‘Preventing Homicide in the Workplace.’
The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health report dated May 1995 read: ‘WARNING! Workers in certain industries and occupations are at increased risk of homicide. From 1980 to 1989, homicide was the third leading cause of death from injury in the workplace.’ Homicide was the leading cause of death among women. Guns were used in 75% of the deaths. Most of the victims worked in the following businesses: taxicabs, liquor stores, gas stations, detectives and justice positions, grocery stores, hotels/motels, restaurants and jewelry stores.[ii]
Sheila Elrod was one of 3.2 jewelry store employees per 100,000 killed during that time period. No Reason to Kill gives a snapshot of her life and the investigation into the search for her killer. It allows the reader to understand why some say, “this was a crime that robbed San Angelo of its innocence.”
