Texas 1999 Cold Case Solved — Killer Lives With Dead Body For 25 Years
On July 9th, 1999, a 34year-old woman in Bowmont, Texas, finished her shift at the Mobile Oil Refinery at 500 p.m. called her 15-year-old daughter to say she would stop by her ex-boyfriend’s house for a bit and then come home for dinner at 6:30. It was a normal summer afternoon and the last time her daughter would ever hear her mother’s voice. She never made it home. Her car was found abandoned in the parking lot of a pharmacy 11 km away with her purse and keys still inside. This is the story of the ex-boyfriend, the man whom the woman named Kimberly had lived with for 5 years. The man she stopped by to see that afternoon to help with some work around the house, who shot her in the back of the head, buried her body under the floor of the front bedroom in his house, and then lived above her remains for the next 25 years. He even put up a fake billboard pretending to search for her. And yet, for reasons we will explore, the case remained ice cold for 25 years until a friend who had kept the secret for far too long finally could not stay silent any longer. And sledgehammers found the truth right beneath the killer’s floor. But let’s go back to the beginning.
In 1999, America was in the final months of the most prosperous decade since World War II. The stock market was at the peak of the dotcom era and unemployment was at its lowest in 30 years. Bumont, Texas in 1999 was an industrial oil town in southeast Texas located 130 km east of Houston. Most residents worked shifts at chemical plants and oil refineries along the NES River. People went to work, came home, and didn’t think about danger coming from someone they knew. Kimberly Langwell, 34, was part of that rhythm. An employee at the mobile oil refinery, a stable job in the core industry of southeast Texas, a woman who worked her shift, came home and took care of her daughter the way millions of single American mothers did every day. She had a teenage daughter named Tfani McKinnis, 15 years old and living with her mother. Kimberly had ended a 5-year relationship with her ex-boyfriend about a year earlier. Not an easy breakup, but the kind that left people breathing a sigh of relief when it was over. She was now dating a new boyfriend named Ken Weatherford.
Tifani remembered her mother as the person she called when something happened, the person she came home to at the end of the day, the person she shared plans with for that evening, the coming week, and that summer. On the afternoon of July 9, 1999, mother and daughter had plans to go out to dinner. Kimberly left the mobile oil refinery at 5:00 p.m. on a hot, humid Texas afternoon. Around 5:15 p.m., she called Tfani from her car. A short, ordinary call with nothing unusual, nothing to suggest it would be the last one. She told Tiffani she needed to stop by her ex-boyfriend’s house to help him with something inside, putting up some paneling or hanging something. She didn’t explain in detail, and Tifani didn’t ask many questions. and then she would be home by 6:30 for their dinner plans. Tefani acknowledged it, agreed, and hung up. That was the last time Tfani heard her mother’s voice. 6:30 7 8 Kimberly didn’t come home, didn’t call, didn’t text. The kind of silence that quickly turned into worry.
Ken Weatherford, Kimberly’s boyfriend, was also waiting for her and couldn’t reach her. He began driving the route Kimberly would have taken from her ex-boyfriend’s house back home. At the parking lot of an Eared pharmacy about 11 km from that address, he found Kimberly’s car with her purse and keys still inside. No Kimberly, just the car and everything she had left behind. Ken called the police. That night, 15-year-old Tfani McKintus, who had only her mother as her sole immediate family, began a 25-year journey of living with an irreplaceable loss. When the Bumont police arrived at the Eard Pharmacy and saw Kimberly Langwell’s car parked in the lot with her purse and keys still inside, with no signs of violence and no witnesses who had seen anything, they were faced with one of the most difficult scenes in a missing person investigation. The car was both the beginning and the end of everything the police had in the early days of the investigation. And that starting point was about 11 kilometers from 1600 Lindberg Drive, the home of Terry Rose, along the route Kimberly would have taken to get home. Bumont police began interviewing people in Kimberly’s circle of acquaintances.
And in doing so, they discovered a detail about her direct supervisor at the refinery, Frank McCormack. Frank was not just a casual acquaintance. He had sent Kimberly dozens of obsessive love letters while they worked together. letters that escalated to a frightening level.
“Kim, I have developed a terribly strong feeling for you. Something has to be done about it. I can hardly work. It takes up all my free time. Please help me deal with this.”
He was the last person working near Kimberly before she left the plant that afternoon. But Frank had a solid, verifiable alibi. On the afternoon of July 9, he left the plant at 5:00 p.m. Stopped at the supermarket to buy items for a poker night with friends with receipts and was home by 700 p.m. to greet guests. There was no time gap long enough for him to have done anything to Kimberly. Frank was ruled out. The police’s attention shifted entirely to Terry Rose, the man Kimberly had told Tfani she was stopping by to see that afternoon. the man she had lived with for 5 years from 1993 to 1998. The man her family described as controlling and abusive throughout that relationship.
Rose was interviewed and told a consistent story. Kimberly came over after work to help put up some paneling on the ceiling. Stayed for a while, then left to pick up Tfani. He admitted he had no alibi after 5:30 p.m. until he met his friend David Wayne Wy a few hours later to play billiards at the corner pocket. A long enough window of time, but not enough to prove anything. Tani did not believe Rose’s story and told the police directly. He was controlling. He continued to stalk Kimberly even after the breakup. He called her friends constantly whenever she visited them as if he wanted everyone to know he still controlled his ex-girlfriend. Those obsessive calls suddenly stopped completely on the day Kimberly disappeared. Ken Weatherford was quickly ruled out. Clear alibi, no motive, no history of violence toward Kimberly. Frank McCormack was ruled out with supermarket receipts. That left Terry Rose squarely in focus. the most reasonable suspect, the last person confirmed to have seen Kimberly, the one with no alibi during the most critical time window, but with no physical evidence, no witnesses, and Rose consistently denying everything.
The case was officially opened. The car at Eard was the only lead, and it wasn’t telling them what had happened. Rose managed a scrapyard and towing service in Bowmont, a job that involved dealing with things people wanted to hide, moving vehicles without drawing attention, and doing heavy physical work. At 42 years old in 1999, he was strong and knew every corner of the house at 1600 Lindberg Drive because it was his house and he had lived there long enough to know where everything was. The Bumont Police Department investigators could not ignore Rose, but looking at him and proving it were two entirely different things. In the years following the disappearance, investigators continued to reinter Kimberly and Rose’s acquaintances, searched for new witnesses in the 1600 Lindberg Drive neighborhood, followed every small lead as it appeared, and reviewed the file for overlooked details. Rose remained in Bowmont, still living at 1600 Lindberg Drive, still running the scrapyard, and continued his life as if nothing had happened. Every time he was reintered, and investigators came back many times over the years, he told the exact same story. Kimberly came over, they did some work around the house, she left, and he didn’t know where she went. Consistent, calm, with no details that contradicted previous tellings. It was the story of a man who had practiced it long enough that it no longer sounded rehearsed. No body meant no direct evidence of murder. You couldn’t prove someone had been killed without evidence of death.
And legally, Kimberly Langwell remained a missing person, not a murder victim. Over the years, investigators tried to gather enough circumstantial evidence to take the case to a grand jury. a lower threshold than conviction, but enough to file formal charges and at least begin the legal process. But every review of the file led to the same conclusion. Clear suspect, insufficient evidence, no legal path forward, no body, no physical evidence, no witnesses. Those three things protected Terry Rose for 25 years, not because he was particularly brilliant, but because he had done something ruthless. buried the body right under the floor of his own house, poured concrete over it, and continued living there. And in those 25 years, only one person besides him knew the truth, a person he had confessed to for some reason, and who had stayed silent.
Tani McKinnus was a 15-year-old teenager when she received that 5:15 p.m. call on July 9, 1999. Her mom was on the way home, stopping by her ex-boyfriend’s house for a bit and would be back by 6:30 for dinner as planned. She hung up and waited. Her mother never arrived. Tifani later described those first days.
“It was horrible because I had just talked to my mom. She had just been on the phone with me and she was excited about our plans. She was joking with me and I didn’t know what to think. 15 years old, she was the person I went to for everything. No siblings. It was just me and my mom.”
In the first year, Tfani said she threw herself into anything that could keep her from thinking about the fact that her mother was no longer there. Growing up without a mother is something no language can fully describe. Tifani didn’t have her mom in the stands at graduation. Didn’t have her by her side when making major life decisions. and her own children would never know their grandmother’s face because she disappeared when their mother was 15 and was never found. As Tiffani grew into adulthood, the pain didn’t disappear. It transformed into something else. She began actively contacting the Bumont police for specific updates. What was being done? Who was reviewing the file whether there were any new leads? She had known Terry Rose’s name long before he was arrested, and she made no secret of her suspicion.
She spoke publicly to the press, to television programs, and to anyone willing to listen that he was the last person to see her mother and that he knew something. She had no proof, only the certainty of a daughter who knew her mother had gone to that house and never left. When the Oxygen channels cold justice program approached the case, Tfani cooperated fully, telling the story again, sitting in front of the camera and talking about her mother, about Rose about 15 years without answers, hoping that national audience attention would lead to new leads that 15 years of investigation had not found. She followed every development related to the case over the years. She continued contacting investigators and she never stopped asking the question that the 5:15 p.m. Phone call on July 9, 1999 had left behind. Where is my mom and what happened to her? 25 years is long enough for a 15year-old teenager to become a 40year-old woman.
Long enough to pass all the major milestones of life. Each of those milestones was another painful reminder of the void Kimberly Langwell left on the afternoon of July 9, 1999. Kimberly Langwell’s disappearance was featured on the Oxygen channels cold justice program led by former prosecutor Kelly Seagler. The show specializes in bringing independent investigative teams to cold cases across America to review evidence and reinterview witnesses with fresh eyes. Cold justice didn’t solve it, but it accomplished what 15 years of quiet investigation could not. It put Kimberly Langwell’s name on national television, kept the case in the public consciousness, and publicly confirmed what Bulmont investigators had known from the beginning, but could not prove that Rose was the most reasonable suspect, and there was not enough evidence to charge him.
The program’s attention also put pressure on Rose in a way that 15 years of quiet investigation had not. He knew the case had just been told on national television that millions of people had just heard his name linked to Kimberly Langwell’s disappearance. In the spring of Tusan 23, the Bowmont Police Department officially reopened the investigation into Kimberly Langwell. Detectives Heather Wilson and Jesus Tamayo decided to review the entire file from 1999 with new tools and fresh perspectives, starting with the original suspect list and reintering each person in order. When they reached David Y, Rose’s friend, who had been interviewed in 1999 and many times afterward, and had always said he didn’t know anything important.
They realized something was different this time. David answered the questions, but his behavior was different from before. Tense in the way someone hiding something often becomes tense when asked about it again. Wilson and Tomio summoned David before a grand jury to testify under oath. And in the grand jury room, David’s tension became obvious from the way he sat and the way he answered. This was not a man who knew nothing. This was a man trying to control what he said. After the grand jury session, Wilson and Tamayo asked David to take a polygraph test. He refused. But a few hours after refusing, David’s lawyer contacted the investigators and said his client had information he wanted to share in exchange for immunity.
The investigators agreed. David came to the police station. He recounted the night of July 9, 1999. Rose called him after work and asked him to pick him up at the Walmart parking lot. When David arrived, Rose was sitting in Kimberly Langwell’s car. Rose asked David to follow him to the Colonade Shopping Center about 60 m from the Eard Pharmacy where Kimberly’s car was later found. Rose parked the car, got into David’s vehicle, and David drove Rose back to his house at 1600 Lindberg Drive without asking why Rose was sitting in his ex-girlfriend’s car. That night, they met to play billiards at the Corner Pocket. The next morning, they had breakfast together at the iron skillet. Then a few days later, Rose told David the truth.
He and Kimberly had gotten into an argument. He shot her in the back of the head and buried her body under the floor of one of the bedrooms in his house. David was shocked. According to him, he was too stunned to ask any more questions. And he stayed silent for 25 years out of fear of being seen as an accomplice because he didn’t know what to do and because every day that passed made it a little harder to start talking. Wilson and Tomio asked David to take a polygraph. This time he agreed and passed clearly with no signs of deception. For the first time in 25 years, Bowmont investigators had a corroborated statement from someone who had heard Rose’s direct confession to killing Kimberly Langwell and where her body was located, and they had enough to obtain a search warrant for the property at 1600 Lindberg Drive.
David Weise 25 years of silence was about to end with sledgehammers. In June 2024, numerous police vehicles and equipment from multiple law enforcement agencies appeared at the address 1600 Lindberg Drive, the Bowont Police Department, the FBI, the Jefferson County District Attorney’s Office, ATF Texas Equarch, and the City of Bumont Public Works Department, all at the same time. Before the search began, investigators approached Terry Rose and his wife Violet to inform them of the search warrant and gave Rose one final chance to tell the truth before the machinery started working. The investigators asked directly:
“Is Kimberly on the property?”
Rose answered:
“No.”
“Is there any evidence of a homicide on the property?”
Rose answered:
“No.”
“Did you kill Kim?”
Rose answered:
“No.”
The answers were consistent with 25 years of denial. He had said no so many times that he wasn’t going to change now, even when he knew what he said no longer mattered. Rose and Violet were allowed to leave temporarily. But before that, the police had attached tracking devices to both of their vehicles. Investigators entered the house with ground penetrating radar, GPR, a device that sends electromagnetic waves through building materials and soil to detect unusual objects beneath the surface, and began systematically scanning each bedroom in the house. Cadaavver dogs worked in parallel. They scanned the first bedroom, then the second bedroom, and when they reached the front bedroom near the street, the bedroom that David Y had pointed out, according to Rose’s confession, the radar detected an anomaly under the tile. The ground beneath had been excavated to create a void, and a reinforcing steel bar, rebar, was missing compared to the rest of the foundation, a sign that someone had deliberately created space underneath and then filled it back in. The cadaavver dogs also alerted in the same area. This was the moment that 25 years of investigation, 25 years of Tfani McKinnus living without her mother and 25 years of Terry Rose living in this house had led to.
Investigators began breaking up the tile floor in the identified area. And when the first tiles were removed, they discovered that cinder blocks had been stacked underneath to support the floor from below and prevent it from collapsing into the void. a sign not of a hasty burial, but of someone who had taken time to prepare, someone who had thought about how to keep the floor from sinking over time. Within the first hour, they found personal items out of place in the dirt. Broken glasses, a keychain, a lighter, small and personal things that had no reason to be under the floor of a house unless they belonged to someone who was lying there. The investigators knew they were on the right track. A few hours later, they began finding bones. First three small toebones confirmed to be human. Then the rest of the remains gradually appeared as they continued digging, wrapped in a blanket. After 13 hours of continuous work, investigators recovered an entire human skeleton. DNA and dental records confirmed. These were the remains of Kimberly Langwell, the woman who had called her daughter at 5:15 p.m. on July 9th, 1999, and said she would be home for dinner at 6:30. The autopsy determined the cause of death, a gunshot wound entering through the back of the skull, shot in the back of the head, exactly as David Y had reported from Rose’s confession weeks earlier. Using the tracking devices attached to the vehicle, investigators determined that Rose was having lunch with Violet at Tia Wanita’s fish camp. They waited for Rose to step out of the restaurant, and when he did, move, boys. Rose was handcuffed in the restaurant parking lot in front of Violet, the woman who had lived with him in the house containing Kimberly Langwell’s body. On June 13th, 2024, Terry Rose was charged with murder with a $1 million bond.
And investigators contacted Tiffani McKinnis, now a 40-year-old woman, with the news that her mother had been found, that her mother’s killer was in custody, and that the question she had carried for 25 years finally had an answer. On the night of July 9, 1999, after killing Kimberly Langwell and burying her body under the floor of the front bedroom in the house at 1600 Lindberg Drive, Terry Rose called David Y and asked him to drive Kimberly’s car to the parking lot near the Eard Pharmacy, creating a fake end point for Kimberly’s route. A car left behind with the purse and keys still inside would look as if she had gone somewhere from there rather than never having left 1600 Lindberg Drive. And while investigators struggled with the impass, Terry Rose put up a billboard to help search for Kimberly Langwell, a large sign with her photo and information, calling on the people of Bumont to provide any information that could help find where she was. Tiffani later described at the trial.
“He put up a billboard to find my mom while knowing exactly where my mom was.”
The judge at sentencing called the action vile and inhuman putting up a billboard pretending to search for the person he had just killed. Participating in the community’s search effort as a concerned party while being the only person who knew that all those efforts would find nothing.
After 1999, Terry Rose got married to Pilot Rose, the 59-year-old woman standing in the parking lot of Tia Wanita’s fish camp on that June 2024 afternoon, watching police handcuff her husband in front of her. She had lived with Rose in the house at 1600 Lindberg Drive without knowing that in the front bedroom beneath the tile floor she walked over every day was the body of Kimberly Langwell wrapped in a blanket. When investigators met with Violet to inform her of what was found under the floor of the house she lived in, her reaction was the complete shock of someone who had just discovered that the man she trusted had brought a secret into the home they shared without ever telling her. Investigators told Violet:
“You didn’t know you trusted him.”
Kimberly Langwell remained 34 years old forever. No more summers, no more dinners with her daughter. No more phone calls at 5:15 p.m. Tifani McInness grew up without her mother for 25 years. And Terry Rose had 25 years 25 years sleeping in a house with the body of the woman he killed lying under the floor of the front bedroom. 25 years putting up billboards and participating in searches and telling the consistent story that Kimberly came and then left. 25 years getting married and continuing life above the truth he had buried. When he was led into the police car after his arrest, investigators asked Rose one last time the same questions they had asked before the search began.
“Did you kill Kim?”
And Rose answered:
“No.”
“Is there any evidence of a homicide on the property?”
And Rose answered:
“No.”
The answers were consistent with all the previous times, even as Kimberly Langwell’s remains were being recovered by investigators. Rose was held on a $1 million bond and initially pleaded not guilty.
While Rose waited for his court date in the Jefferson County Jail, he called his son Terry Rose Jr., a call that was recorded per federal regulations, something Rose apparently forgot. In that call, Rose spoke about the 40-year plea deal offer from the prosecutors.
“That 40-year offer feels like an insult. I’m 68 years old. With 40 years, I’d serve 20. So, I’d be 88 years old, and Tiffy will be there to say no to the parole board.”
His son suggested that maybe Tfani would die before then. Rose replied:
“That would be great. I’ll piss in a cup and send it to you guys to pour on her grave.”
He then spoke about why he killed killed Kimberly because she had not been honest with him about continuing to live her life after they broke up. As if Kimberly Langwell going on with her life after leaving the relationship with him was something he considered her fault deserving punishment. That call was introduced as evidence at the sentencing hearing and after hearing the call played back. Rose’s defense team contacted the prosecutors one week before the trial date and said that Rose was ready to plead guilty in exchange for the maximum 40-year sentence under the original plea deal. The same deal he had called an insult in the call with his son. On December 16, 2025, at the Jefferson County Courthouse, Terry Rose stood before the judge and was asked:
“Are you guilty of the charge of first-degree murder on July 9, 1999?”
And he answered:
“Yes.”
The first time in 26 years, he verbally admitted that he had killed Kimberly Langwell.
David Y testified at the sentencing hearing, recounting the night of July 9, 1999 once again in court and turned to Tiffany’s family to say that he wished he had spoken up immediately when it happened instead of waiting 25 years. Detective Wilson confirmed in court that David Y’s statement was the sole reason Kimberly’s remains were found. Without David Y, there would have been no search warrant, no GPR, no 13 hours of digging at 1600 Lindberg Drive. The judge sentenced him to 40 years, the maximum under the plea deal, and told Rose directly:
“If I could give you 50 years, I would. If I could give you 60, I would. I really wish I hadn’t accepted this plea deal and had let the case go before a jury because I believe the jury would have given you life.”
Then Tfani McKinnus stood in the courtroom, looked directly at Terry Rose and began with a question.
“Do you remember me?”
That was the question Rose had asked her about 3 years after her mother disappeared when he approached her and said:
“Do you still remember me? Have you found your mom yet?”
When he knew her mother’s body was lying under the floor of his house. when he stood in front of the daughter of the woman he had just killed and asked about the search as if he were a concerned person as if that question was not the crulest taunt one could say to a child looking for her mother. Tifani continued:
“For 25 years I woke up and went to bed with the same unbearable question. Where is my mother and what happened to her? The pain of not knowing is indescribable. It is grief. It is fear and a profound sense of abandonment that never lets go. The fact that my mother was buried under this man’s house all those years, imprisoned even in death, is unbearable.”
And she ended with what needed to be said.
“The day you killed my mother and buried her under your bedroom was a terrible day. And that terrible day took everything from me.”
The Kimberly Langwell case leaves lessons for anyone living in America. First, if your loved one has plans to meet an ex-boyfriend or ex-girlfriend, especially someone who was controlling or abusive in the past relationship, establish a simple check-in system. Text when you arrive, text when you leave. Not because exes are always dangerous, but because Kimberly Langwell called her daughter to say she would be home at 6:30, and no one knew what to do when she didn’t show up. No plan, no one assigned to check if she stayed silent too long. Second, if you know something about a case that others don’t, whether you heard it directly or witnessed it indirectly, understand that silence is not neutrality. David Wei stayed silent for 25 years, and in those 25 years, Tiffany McKinnus grew up without her mother with answers, without a place to lay flowers. If you have information about a cold case or a missing person, you can contact Crimestoppers anonymously at 1 800-22 tips. No name needed, no court appearance, just say what you know. Third, if your family is waiting for answers in an unsolved missing person case, stay in regular contact with investigators and specifically ask if the case can be re-examined with new technology. The Kimberly Langwell case was solved not because of technology, but because one person decided to tell the truth, and sometimes the persistence of the family is the reason that person finally decides to speak.
