ATHENS, Texas — Three decades is a long time to live not knowing why your loved one is no longer alive and who may be responsible for their death.
That is reality for the Herriage family in Henderson County.
On the morning of March 8, 1987, Rickey Gene Herriage was found murdered in Athens. He was 29-years-old.
“He was shot and that's how he was deceased, and then, his body was dumped out there on Monkey Bridge Road,” Henderson County Sheriff Botie Hillhouse said. “They did a lot of interviews back in '87. They worked the case. They never turned up anything."
Sheriff Hillhouse says Herriage was last seen walking in front of the Pit Grill, a local restaurant known back then to be a meetup spot for after-hour fellowship.
"I wanted to go out to where he was found, but they didn't think I should go,” Rickey’s mother Annette Herriage said. “It was really a hard time.”
Since 1987, Annette says she is living a parent’s nightmare. She has the terrifying gut feeling her son's killer has walked freely among she and her family.
"I still feel like whoever killed him is here, and I strongly feel that,” Herriage said. “We had an amateur investigator on the case. I really didn't feel like the investigation took off like it should have, and I still don't."
According to the FBI’s Uniform Crime Report, the Herriage case is one of 52,402 homicides reported in Texas between 1980 and 2008. Thirty percent of those cases are unsolved.
"Back then, DNA wasn't really thought of that much,” Henderson County investigator Jerry Corder said. “There wasn't a lot of preservation with DNA, so that's a little bit of a detriment to us, because we can't go back and research some of the DNA aspects of it."
The Herriage murder received national attention. In 2015, it was spotlighted as a cold case on NBC Dateline. The website Project: Cold Case also featured the case for the past four years.
The biggest turn in the case came when Detective Corder was assigned to the case in 2016.
"It's been a challenge. Once you get a cold case like this, you basically start from scratch. The longer you go, the tougher it is, because a lot of your witnesses, possible suspects end up dying," Corder said. "You must go back and review every single piece of paper to make sure you don’t miss anything. I take a lot of hand-written notes, and I’ve gotten a folder full of handwritten notes just since I’ve picked up the case, trying to keep everything straight in my head so I can keep the story together, and hopefully piece everything together years later.”
Corder says the department is also working the cases of are that of Heather Cannon, a teenager who went missing from Athens in 2009 and the 1993 unsolved murder of 36-year-old Corsicana socialite Shelly Watkins.
“In a case like this in an agency our size, it’s difficult to dedicate one person to do cold cases only. So having the family out there beating the bushes a lot of times, it keeps it relevant," Corder explained. "Having the family being an active participant is very beneficial to us.”
Rickey’s family, especially his mother and his sister Virginia Culpepper, have been actively searching for answers in the case themselves.
“We’d hear that so-and-so said this and so-and-so said that,” Annette Herriage said. “Working it was hard. We’d go on the weekends and try to find these people that supposedly said this and said they’d seen him or whatever. A lot of times when we’d get to them they’d say, ‘No I didn’t say that,' or 'No, that’s not right.'”
According to Herriage, that type of hands-on assistance from the family was not always as welcomed by law enforcement.
“They tried to say we went around, and we talked to people, and it just opened up a big bunch of gossip talking, and it made the investigation worse," Herriage said. "I did not feel like that.”
She and her daughter did not give up and have done everything in their power to ensure Rickey’s case does not goes away from the community's memory. From speaking to possible witnesses to maintaining a Facebook page made in his honor, the family continues to exhaust every possible lead.
“If your son got murdered, I do believe any woman would do everything she could to find out what happened to him,” Herriage said. “There’s still some people out there that I would like for them to talk to.”
Culpepper remembers the day her oldest brother’s body was discovered as if it was yesterday.
She says it is something, even after or if his killer is found, that she will likely never fully get over.
Each year on the anniversary of Rickey’s death, Culpepper places an advertisement in the local newspaper encouraging anyone to come forward with information that may help solve his murder.
“It’s something that is on your mind 24/7. It doesn’t go away,” Culpepper said. “You have to work. You have to smile. You have to live, but it’s there, and it doesn’t go away.”
Culpepper says what really sticks in her mind is an incident that happened days before her brother's murder.
“He was in a fight in Caney City. There were five guys that jumped on him," Culpepper remembered. "Rickey had told his ex-wife that it was not a fair fight, and he would see each of them one-on-one and he would come out ahead.”
Culpepper says she believes the fight may have led to Rickey's murder.
According to Detective Corder, investigators never named any suspects in the case. However, he says there are names that resurfaced over the years.
“We re-polygraphed folks that have taken one prior just to make sure that everything is still the same as it was when they did their case back then,” Corder said. “There’s been several named, and we’re still looking into some of those. Some we’ve been able to clear, but we’re still looking into several names.”
Sheriff Hillhouse recently presented the case to the Sheriff’s Association of Texas Cold Case Review Team, a group of current and retired sheriffs, rangers, prosecutors and forensics investigators hoping to bring fresh eyes and different insights to the case.
Sheriff Hillhouse says in his department’s most recent efforts to solve this cold case, he plans to send DNA from the Herriage case to a forensics lab in California, where new technology is being used to analyze evidence from the Shelly Watkins case.
“My concern is trying to get the resolution,” Hillhouse said. “That family deserves answers, and I really want us to be able to give them answers. The only way we can do that is to keep working the case aggressively until there’s absolutely nothing else to be done.
Though it appears the case is at a standstill, the Herriage family is still hopeful for answers.
As of now, the Henderson County Crime Stoppers, along with family and friends of the victim, are offering a $16,500 reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the person(s) responsible for the Herriage murder.
“It’s like this: If someone knows something and if that person that they know killed Rickey or pretty sure did, they may be afraid to talk. But as time goes by, some of them have passed away, a few that was around him around that time,” Annette Herriage said. “Of course, they’ll say, "Well, what if whoever killed him is dead?’ I’m not going there.”
The entire Herriage family simply wants to find Rickey's killer and believes the day may come soon.
Culpepper says she prays Rickey's murder is solved while her mother is still alive. Sadly, Rickey's father passed away in 2000, never knowing the true identity of the person who took his son's life 13 years before.
“If they have any kind of a heart, a mind, a conscious, if they’ve ever lived after losing a loved one, then I’m praying," Culpepper said. "And if they’re out there and they can hear me now, I’m praying that they come forth.”
Anyone with information about the case or any unsolved crimes in Henderson County is asked to call the Henderson County Sheriff's Office at 903-675-5128 or Henderson County Crime Stoppers at 800-545-8477.