In June 1964, a Fort Bend County farmer discovered a headless, handless torso in a roadside ditch — a killing so cleanly done that investigators said only someone trained in anatomy could have done it. Sheriff “Tiny” Gaston and the Texas Rangers searched for weeks, but the victim was never identified. Then, just months later, another scene shocked Texas — Room 636 of San Antonio’s Sheraton Gunter Hotel, where blood coated the walls and floor but no body was found. The man who’d checked in under a false name vanished, only to turn up two days later dead by suicide in another downtown hotel. His name was Walter Audley Emerick — a drifter, forger, and former airman who may have been responsible for far more than the crime in that room.
From the rice fields of Fort Bend County to the marble halls of the Gunter, this episode follows the grim trail of the 1960s Texas torso murders and asks whether the mystery that began in the Rio Grande ended that night with a .22 in Room 536 — or if the real killer was still out there.
If you have any information about the Fort Bend Torso Case of 1964, please contact the Sheriff’s Office there at (281) 341-4665.
If you have any information about Walter Audley Emerick or his victim, please contact the San Antonio Police at (210) 207-7635.
Sources: The Houston Post, The Houston Chronicle, The San Antonio Express-News, thegunterhotel.com, historichotels.org
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