Prosecution scores key victories in pretrial hearing for Carla Walker murder cold case

Glen McCurley, the 78-year-old man accused of murdering 17-year-old Carla Walker in 1974, pleaded not guilty during a pretrial hearing on Wednesday, as his defense sustained major losses related to the admissibility of evidence for his upcoming trial. At that trial, scheduled to begin Aug. 19, the judge ruled the prosecution can use recorded interviews in which McCurley seemingly confessed to the crime.

McCurley arrived at Tarrant County Criminal District Court on Wednesday in a wheelchair. He was wearing a dark green Tarrant County jail jumpsuit. He spent much of the hearing with his head in his hands but occasionally looked around the courtroom, which was filled with several family members and friends of Carla Walker and two family members of McCurley.

After decades with scant progress on solving one of Fort Worth’s best known cold cases, police identified McCurley through improved DNA evidence and took him into custody on Sept. 21, 2020. At a downtown Fort Worth police station, detectives Leah Wagner and Jay Bennett immediately began interviewing him. Portions of a four-hour recording were played in the courtroom Wednesday.

At first, McCurley was adamant he had not committed a crime. “I don’t know the girl,” he told the detectives. “I’ve never seen her.” Nearly an hour into the conversation, Wagner told him, “We used your DNA to find out who you were. There’s no question. We know you did this to her. We just need to know why.” About 30 minutes later, according to Wagner’s testimony from Wednesday, McCurley confessed. (This portion of the recorded video was not played.)