Shortly before 9:00 p.m. on December 29, 1991, brothers Bill and Mike Goins were driving to the Austin, Texas, home of Mike’s girlfriend, Kerry Branch. Two blocks from the residence, they nearly collided with a tan Ford Thunderbird going the wrong way on a one-way street. They noticed two white men in the car.
Approximately five minutes later and less than a block from the home, the Goins’ brother-in-law, Steve Marks, pulled behind the Thunderbird as it was driving considerably under the speed limit. The car’s driver pulled into a nearby garage.
When Steve arrived at the residence, he and the Goins brothers joked about the bird brains in the T-bird. They would soon learn they had encountered angry birds.
As Bill, Mike, and Steve chatted on the porch, they heard the chilling screams of a woman in the vicinity of a twenty-four-hour do-it-yourself car wash less than two-hundred feet from the home. The men arrived at the locale in less than a minute, but found no one there.
The cries for help were from Colleen Reed, a twenty-eight-year-old accountant and accounts payable supervisor for the Lower Colorado Authority in Austin. She had been kidnapped, and it would be nearly seven years before her remains were found.
Colleen Reed’s murder is one of the many committed by Texas’ perhaps most infamous serial killer.
Collen Reed
As the Goins brothers and Steve Marks raced to the scene, they heard a car door slam and saw the Thunderbird pull out of the car wash. This time, the pedal was to the metal, as the T-bird roared out and proceeded to go, again, the wrong way on another one-way street, nearly colliding with two other vehicles.
A few seconds later, the three men arrived at the car wash where they found a white Mazda Miata MX-5 convertible abandoned inside one of the stalls. The car was covered in soap, not having been washed. Inside the car were keys and a purse.
Steve Marks returned to the house and called the police. They found the car was registered to Colleen Reed. Her driver’s license and other identification were found in the purse.
Colleen’s Car
Colleen, a Louisiana native who had served in the Marine Corps Reserve, had lived in Austin for four years. Authorities tracked her movements on that day.
After working as a volunteer for her employer’s flood hotline, Colleen attended church (December 29, 1991, was a Sunday) with her boyfriend, Oliver Guerra. Following the service’s conclusion at 12:15 p.m. the couple went out for lunch. Later that afternoon, Colleen told Oliver she was feeling under the weather and was going home to take a nap. She called him at approximately 7:00 p.m., saying she had rested, was feeling better, and was going to run some errands.
Investigators determined Colleen purchased groceries at the local Whole Foods Market at approximately 9:00 p.m. and arrived at the car wash roughly ten minutes later. She was abducted shortly afterwards.
Colleen Kidnapped
No one had a bad word to say about Colleen, and nothing in her background suggested she would be targeted for kidnapping. Her family, boyfriend, and friends were all eliminated as suspects in her disappearance.
It appeared Colleen Reed’s kidnapping was a random crime, the kind which are the toughest to solve. Because her purse was found in the car undisturbed, robbery was ruled out as a motive.
For a year-and-a-half, no significant leads surfaced in Colleen’s disappearance.
Liked By All Who Knew Her
In April 1992, five months after Colleen was last seen, construction worker Alva Worley was arrested on weapons charges in his hometown of Belton, Texas, sixty miles north of Austin on Interstate 35. Under questioning, he admitted his involvement in her kidnapping. Worley identified his accomplice as his drinking buddy Kenneth McDuff.
Kenneth McDuff Alva Worley
Worley says he and McDuff traveled to Austin intending to purchase drugs, but altered their plans after spotting Colleen at the car wash. McDuff, driving his 1985 Ford Thunderbird, circled the car wash twice, the first time nearly colliding with the Goins brothers and nearly hitting Steve Marks the second time. After parking in a stall next to where Colleen had begun washing her car, McDuff grabbed her by the throat and dragged her to his car where Worley tied her hands behind her back.
As McDuff began driving to Interstate 35, he pulled over and told Worley to switch places with him. With Worley behind the wheel, McDuff raped Colleen in the back seat. At an exit, the men again switched places and Worley took his turn at raping Colleen as McDuff drove along Texas Highway 317. Worley says both he and McDuff also beat her and burned her with cigarettes.
Worley went on to tell police that McDuff drove down a dirt road north of Belton, near land owned by his mother. The men forced Colleen out of the car and McDuff again raped her before knocking her unconscious and locking her in the trunk of his car.
McDuff then drove to Worley’s sister’s house in Belton where the two men parted ways. Before leaving, McDuff asked to borrow a pocket knife and shovel. Worley claimed that was the last time he saw Colleen and that she was still alive.
A search of the land owned by McDuff’s mother and surrounding areas did not find Colleen, nor did several searches conducted throughout Belton.
Worley Comes Clean
One month before Worley’s confession, McDuff’s 1985 Ford Thunderbird had been found in a motel parking lot in Waco. Small amounts of human blood were found in the back seat and trunk along with hairs similar to Colleen’s.
When he was shown a photo of McDuff, Mike Goins identified him as one of the men with whom he and his brother had nearly collided with on the evening of Colleen’s abduction.
McDuff Identified
Kenneth McDuff was a name with whom police were all-too-familiar. He was a career criminal with a rap sheet of serious crimes, including rape and murder, stretching over a quarter-of-a-century.
Colleen Reed was the latest in McDuff’s trail of victims across the Lone Star State.
Career Criminal
McDuff had acquired the moniker “The Broomstick Killer” in 1966 when he was convicted of murdering sixteen-year-old Edna Sullivan; her boyfriend, seventeen-year-old Robert Brand; and Brand’s cousin, fifteen-year-old Mark Dunnam. McDuff repeatedly raped Edna before breaking her neck with a broomstick. The boys were shot to death because they were in the way of his prey.McDuff was given three death sentences, but they were reduced to life imprisonment when the Supreme Court ruled the death penalty unconstitutional in 1972. Due to the significant overcrowding in the Texas prisons, he was paroled for his “good behavior” in 1989. comWithin three days of his release, McDuff changed his behavior.
Marcus Dunham Robert Brand Edna Sullivan
On October 14, 1989, the body of thirty-one-year-old Sarafia Parker was discovered in Temple, fifty miles south of Waco along the I-35 corridor. McDuff was never charged with her murder, but investigators are certain he was the culprit.
Sarafia Parker
McDuff is also believed to have murdered twenty-three-year-old Cynthia Gonzalez. In an eerily similar manner to how Colleen Reed was abducted three months later, Cynthia disappeared from an Arlington car wash on September 15, 1991. Six days later, her remains were found in the wooded terrain near County Road 313 one mile west of Interstate 35. She had been raped and shot to death.
Cynthia Gonzales
On the evening of October 10, less than one month later, after picking up prostitute and drug addict Brenda Thompson in Waco, McDuff tied her up before stopping his truck near a police checkpoint. When a policeman walked toward McDuff’s vehicle, Brenda repeatedly kicked at the windshield, cracking it several times before McDuff sped away. The policeman gave chase, but McDuff eluded him by turning off his headlights and, again, driving the wrong way on one-way streets. McDuff made his way to a wooded area nine miles north of Waco along United States Route 84. There, he raped and suffocated Brenda to death. Her body was not found until 1998.
Brenda Thompson
McDuff committed a virtually identical crime five days later, on October 15. He and seventeen-year-old prostitute Regenia Moore were seen arguing at a Waco motel. Shortly thereafter, McDuff drove her to a remote area along Texas State Highway 6 near Waco where he raped and strangled her to death. Regenia’s body, like Brenda Thompson’s, was not discovered until 1998.
Regenia Moore
Prostitute Valencia Joshua was last seen alive on the campus of the Texas State Technical Institute in Waco on February 24, 1992, two months after the disappearance of Colleen Reed. Valencia’s body was discovered on March 15 in a wooded area near the campus. She had also been strangled to death and is believed to be another of McDuff’s victims.
Valencia Joshua
McDuff’s next confirmed victim was Melissa Northrup, a twenty-two-year-old Waco store clerk. The mother of two was pregnant when she went missing from the store on February 29, 1992. McDuff was seen in the vicinity of the store at the time of Melissa’s disappearance. Her body was found on April 26 in southeast Dallas County; she had been raped and strangled to death.
Melissa Northrup
The problem for investigators was that the victims were spread across several Texas counties, making a single coordinated investigation difficult. When police learned McDuff was peddling drugs and had an illegal firearm, both federal offenses, a warrant was issued for his arrest on the weapons charges on March 6, 1992. The real urgency in finding him, however, was that he was a suspected serial killer.
Two months later, on May 4, McDuff was arrested at a homeless shelter in Kansas City after being profiled on America’s Most Wanted. He had worked for a refuse collection company under the alias Richard Fowler.
McDuff Captured
Kenneth McDuff was convicted of the murder of Melissa Northrup and was sentenced to death. In January 1994, while on death row, he received a second death sentence after being convicted of the murder of Colleen Reed, even though her remains had not been found.
On October 6, 1998, five weeks before his execution and with all of his appeals rejected, McDuff led police to a shallow grave along the banks of the Brazos River, just outside of his native Marlin County. In the grave lay the remains of Colleen Reed. McDuff said he had buried her there after confirming Alva Worley’s account of raping and torturing her with burning cigarettes.
McDuff Reveals Where Colleen Lay
For the murders of Melissa Northrup and Colleen Reed, Kenneth McDuff was executed by lethal injection on November 16, 1998, at the state prison in Huntsville. Investigators are certain he committed at least eight other murders, and suspect him of an additional six. They are equally certain he committed additional murders which they have not yet been able to connect to him. Some believe he may have been the worst serial killer in Texas history.
McDuff Executed
Kenneth McDuff is the only man in Texas history to be sentenced to death for murder, paroled, arrested, and again convicted of murder and re-sent to death row.
A Dubious Distinction
Alva Worley pled guilty to aggravated sexual assault in the rape, torture, and murder of Colleen Reed. Under a plea deal, charges of kidnapping and murder were dropped. He was sentenced to forty years in prison.
Worley has been denied parole several times, most recently in 2021. He is next eligible in May 2032, when he will be seventy-five-years-old.
Imprisoned Alva
Colleen Reed’s father and mother both died in 1998, the year her remains were found.
Her father, John, passed in June, four months before his daughter’s fate was learned. Theresa Reed succumbed on December 2, six weeks after Colleen’s remains were located.
Colleen Reed (Far Right) With Her Sisters, (Left To Right) Loraine, Mae, and Anita
https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/196384289/colleen-ann-reed
SOURCES:
- America’s Most Wanted
- Dallas Morning News
- Houston Chronicle
- Unsolved Mysteries
- UPI
- Waco Tribune
Wow. He was one nasty piece of work. Still can’t believe he was already in prison for murder and then released for “good behaviour “. Disgusting. All those poor women dead because he was a good boy in prison 🤬🤬