On the night of February 16th, 1974, someone opened Carla’s side of the car door, hit the boyfriend Rodney over the head with the back of a gun, and grabbed Carla. It was 3 days later that Carla’s body was discovered in a covert. She was tortured, raped, murdered. Carla Walker was a 17-year-old cheerleader in Fort Worth, Texas.
She was dating Rodney, the star quarterback. Everyone liked Carla. They really did. If you asked anyone that we went to high school with, all groups of kids, they would always say, “Oh, she’s so nice. She’s so nice.” And just smiled a lot. When this happened, you know, we found Carla.
She suffered in silence and uh just devastation. That’s when my life changed forever and always. But I’ve never given up. This case was cold for 47 years. Law enforcement worked this case the entire time. They just had no leads. Everyone was trying to do their best, but that’s when you need technology. What Aram brings to these cases is truth and certainty.
In the 70s, they just collected that evidence in a box and put it up on a shelf. This new technology was going to be the answer. Investigators had sent Carla’s dress off to a lab and they found some DNA on her dress. The DNA was from an unknown male. It was 2019 when we sent more items of Carlos clothing back to a lab in California for further DNA testing and they were able to develop a full DNA profile.
Uh this profile was uploaded into Kotus and there were no hits. And then we send the extracts off to try and do genetic genealogy and the company that this was sent to pretty much consumed everything that we had and no results. We’re really stressed out. Once you use DNA, there’s a process called consumption where you’re using either most of it or all of it and that doesn’t leave anything left.
I called the lab and I said, “How much DNA do we have?” And they said, “We really only have like four nanogs, which was not enough to do the genetic genealogy.” At this point, we’re like, so we we decided we’re going to go ahead and reach out to a DNA came. It went through feasibility analysis and it actually looked great for us.
So when we built a profile for the Carla Walker case, we uploaded it to Family Tree DNA and it led to a name. This was the first time this technology was used in a trial in Texas. It was pressure. They say we need to see every part of how you got there and every part has to make sense. As a prosecutor, I now have to tear this case apart in a way that the police look at who did it.
I have to look at how do I prove it. The very first thing we did on this case actually as a group with my investigator and my co-consel was we went to author and we said tell us what this is because we don’t know and we’re going to have to understand it in order to put it into court. They walked us through what FGG was and we were finding ways to get in the evidence we needed to get in. So they went to trial.
They had everyone come and talk about this technology isn’t accredited. Of course it wasn’t. It was brand new. and the defense had hoped that they would easily throw it out. Our defense attorney filed many, many, many motions to suppress based on this being used for the first time in courts. And so what we have to do is help the court understand that the science is valid. It’s reliable.
That was the biggest hurdle of this case. It was a lot of pressure to think if I mess this up somehow, if the court messes up somehow, if anything goes wrong, it affects the ability to use FGG in Texas. We were very lucky in that scientists from not only author but other labs came in and helped explain to the court what this science was, how it was used, how it can be considered reliable, and ultimately the judge ruled that the evidence would be admissible.
We don’t live in fear, but we lived in sadness for a long time. For me, 45 years is too long to hate. It’s a cancer. And uh I don’t have time, need, or space for cancer uh in my life. My family’s better. My neighborhood’s better. Our community is better. You know, I just thank God cuz God put everything into place.
Jim said, “When we have justice, I want to help others that don’t have answers get the same thing in Carla’s name.” As I was sitting there, I realized that that needed to be legislation, right? We now have precedent in court. The technology has been working to solve all of these unsolvable cases.
It’s time to get the government to start putting pen to paper to actually figure out how can we fund this for law enforcement. How do we help others adopt this technology? we can take what happened to Carla and in her name and in her honor do better and make sure that she’s never forgotten. And I thought to myself, what if we could name this Bell Carla Walker? I think I choked up.
Yeah, I think I choked up. I knew what that meant. And we were greatly honored. So, we drafted our first bill. We were looking for a new head of this bill and Senator Cornin has actually been the lead of most of the DNA bills that are in Congress right now. As a former judge and former attorney general, obviously criminal justice issues are part of my responsibility over those years.
Cornin has been very science and technology forward and legislation that he introduces, especially with DNA and DNA for law enforcement. He was an integral part of creating a lot of the legislation that is being used to run the sex assault kits in the United States. A lot of the code is testing, a lot of the traditional DNA testing for law enforcement.
So, it was a natural fit for him to want to bring in this new technology and find how it would fit into this legislation. DNA has been transformative. I was just uh in awe at the capability to be able to identify a perpetrator literally decades after the original murder. So this is a a very powerful tool to bring people to justice.
There are three parts to the Carla Walker Act. The first part of the Carla Walker Act funds law enforcement to be able to run cases that are just sitting there right now. The second part of the Carla Walker Act funds state labs to adopt this technology to start to bring it in house.
And the third part of Carla Walker collects the metrics for the attorney general of the United States. The metrics will tell you what technologies are you using? Are they identifying a perpetrator or a victim? And how long is it taking? If they see that in four years they solve more cases using the $40 million that goes into Carla Walker, they can fund it at any level.
And this could become the next Debbie Smith act. So Debbie Smith is what for rape kits and STR testing. What I hope Carla Walker becomes for FG testing. All the state labs, law enforcement agencies, advocacy groups, innocence project worked together on this bill until we had a bill that everyone felt happy with. And that is what’s being introduced this year.
In the end, it’s about building consensus in a system that’s designed to to defeat you. And by that, I mean, obviously, you got to get through the House and the Senate and on the president’s desk. You got to get through the committees. You got to get through all the interference uh in between in order to get something across the finish line.
So, uh we still got work to do to be sure. The idea that it would be done in Carla’s name, it’s so beautiful, right? Because her family suffered for so many years. And for that suffering to ultimately lead to such goodness and such possibility, Carla Walker will be with us forever in that way. The Carlo Walker bill is the infrastructure that’s necessary to start to create the path on on how to succeed using this technology.
If this technology is used in real time, we’re going to live in a world where there are no cold cases. I truly believe if there’s DNA in the case, every case will be solved in real time. Whether it’s contemporary or 47 years old, you’ll get an answer. You no longer have to wait. the Carla Walker Act.
This is going to be the link that’s going to open up all the doors. I want people to see that there’s hope. Hope. Don’t give up. Fight. We never gave up. To be able to continue this legacy for Carla and to give Jim purpose. That means the world to me. This legislation is going to help hundreds of thousands cases get solved.
It’s going to prevent people from becoming the next Carla. I hope we carry her spirit in this legislation and I hope that in her name we catch all of these horrific monsters.
