Annals of Crime, Part IX: Dallas man’s slaying comes during busy week

Steven Vincent Fugett, 21, had the bad fortune to die of gunshot wounds during a particularly newsy week for law enforcement in 1989.

Officers in Johnson County were spread somewhat thin.

There were rumors of a satanic cult preying on children. No concrete proof ever surfaced.

And there was an investigation of the Johnson County Sheriff’s Office by the Texas Rangers.

Two citizens alleged that valuables were taken from their residence during a 1987 raid and never returned.

Fugett received only six paragraphs in the Oct. 4, 1989, Times-Review.

“The body of a male was discovered by a passing motorist yesterday afternoon just off the side of the road in the northern part of the county,” a nonbylined, but detailed, story read in part.

“About 5:30 p.m. Tuesday, deputies found the body, naked, lying on its back in tall grass on Private Road 100 north of FM 917, one mile west of I-35.

“The man measures five feet, six inches and weighs about 150 pounds, authorities said. Deputies believe the man is black, although the extent of decomposition made even that identification difficult, authorities said.

“Sheriff Eddy Boggs was reluctant to give the cause of death, as the body is being autopsied by a Johnson County medical examiner today. There were a few places, on one leg and on the torso, which may have been stab wounds or simply where animals had gotten to the body, the sheriff said.

“No identification was found, although the man was wearing a choker-type necklace, made of fine chain, with a ring attached. Apparently, a stone was missing from the ring. The man was also wearing a friendship-type bracelet on the left wrist.”

On Oct. 5, reporter Carolea Hassard wrote that, “Three bullets were found in the body and recovered, and cause of death will be ruled as homicide unless examiners can find evidence indicating otherwise.

“The bullets, [assistant medical examiner Dr. David] Libman said, were discovered after taking full-body X-rays, although examiners ‘can’t be sure of the entrance wounds’ because of several open places caused by bullets, animal bites or both.

“The man was black, measured five feet, six inches and weighed about 150 pounds. He was between 20 and 40 years of age, Libman said.”

Fugett was identified through fingerprints.

“His fingers were extracted from his hands,” said retired investigator David Cole. “They were injected and blown up to be rolled for prints.”

No other follow-up story was written in the Times-Review that month. Vital records show only that he was born in Garrison County on Jan. 28, 1969, the son of Gerald K. and Mary G. Fugett, and was pronounced dead in Johnson County on Oct. 3, 1989.

Fugett is buried at Cedarlawn Park in Sherman.

In fact, Fugett was a resident of Sherman or Dallas, a habitué of the Deep Ellum entertainment district, and was believed involved in an alternative lifestyle that could have put his life at risk.

Hate crimes were common in Dallas in the ’80s.

If killed in Dallas, he could have been transported within an hour to the dump spot between Egan and I-35. It’s doubtful anyone would have noticed.

And no one did for days.

“When I took over in ’97, I think we had one and maybe two deputies for the whole county for the whole night,” said Johnson County sheriff Bob Alford. “This was pre-that, so we’re talking about one deputy, if he was out patrolling. It doesn’t take long for that [kind of word] to spread.”

There were questions in the Fugett case that the newspaper stories don’t reveal.

Who were his friends and acquaintances? What crowd did he run with? Were his parents aware of any enemies their son might have had. What did the friendship bracelet signify? Likewise, the choker necklace? What caliber weapon was used in the shooting? Did the victim die at the scene or elsewhere? Does the physical evidence still exist? Could DNA be extracted?

Cole responded to the scene with several other officers, including James Henry.

“I identified the body as a black man,” Cole said. “The body was about 100 yards off 917 and 50 yards off Private Road 100, which is now Rough Road. If you came out of Dallas or Fort Worth and down I-35, that would have been a logical place to turn.

“The body was decomposed, not skeletal but in advanced decomposition. There was no clothing. Cliff Moody and Tony Yocum were assigned to the case. Through some interviews in Dallas, they found out the victim had an alternative lifestyle.

“The medical examiner’s office found bullets in the body. I recall they were small caliber. They couldn’t have been larger than .38. If bullets were extracted and turned over to Cliff or Tony, they would have put them in [the property room].”

Dallas Police Department provided little assistance in the investigation, Cole recalled.

“Their attitude was: ‘You got the body, you got the case.’ ”

Unlike a number of old cases, the Fugett case file does exist.

“Maybe a complete investigation couldn’t be done at the time,” Alford said. “It goes back to what I have available to me today versus what was available back then. I have DNA now. DNA has been around since the early ’90s.”

The majority of case and evidence files before 1985 have disappeared.

In cases in which files do not exist, Alford said, the only record of the homicide may be original stories from the Times-Review or stories from this newspaper’s past series on cold case homicides.

“The last time the Times-Review ran this series, I’d never heard of some of these cases,” Alford said. “In some of the old cases files, there’s not much there. There should at least be a diagram and some photographs.

“Whether the file got lost in a switch of administrations, I can’t say. Evidence gets misplaced unintentionally. I would never go so far as to say somebody destroyed something intentionally.”

He said he’s willing to contact investigators who worked old cases “at any time new information comes forward. These [present staff] guys have six to eight new cases per day. I don’t have a cold-case investigator. That’s a luxury.

“Fort Worth has a cold-case unit. Harris County has one. Johnson County does not have a designated officer to handle cold cases.

“Clearing a couple of these cases might spark a renewal of interest and show that [solving them] can be done.”

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