It was 1984 when a 13-year-old girl missing from Corpus Christi was found brutally murdered. Her name was Helen Kilgore, and to this day, no one has ever been convicted of the crime.
The girl's family desparately continues to search for answer, and as 3News found out, there are new efforts underway right now to solve the cold case.
"She would have been somebody in life. She would have made it somewhere," said Helen's sister Kelly as she scrolled through cherished family photos.
"That's all we have left," she said.
As Helen got older, Kelly said she had a habit of running away, but just for a couple days. On April 13, 1984, however, she disappeared once again but never returned.
Days later, just outside the city of Meridian, Texas, about 300 miles away from Corpus Christi, something caught the attention of Durwood Koonsman.
"I turned around and went back by it, and I seen feet sticking out," Koonsman said.
At the young age of 13, Helen Kilgore was dead. She had been kidnapped, her body beaten from head to toe, and was left wrapped in a moving blanet on the side of the road. An autopsy performed found the cause of death was a single gunshot wound to the head.
Chief Deputy Clint Pullin of the Bosque County Sheriff's Office has now reopened Helen's cold case.
"I believe in some point in time, we will find out who did this," Pullin said. "It's just a matter of time, and it's been a long enough time as it is. Time to finally try to close the book on this case and find out who the shooter is."
Still, solving the case has proven difficult due to a lack of evidence.
"It's limited because not always do we have the same evidence here that we did in 1984. There is some evidence that is no longer here," Pullin said. "When we have an investigation like this and it's an old cold case, we need help."
Kelly Kilgore has now turned to local Private Investigator Bill Schaefer with Park and Associates.
"There's plenty of unsolved murders around here, but Helen's is the one that crossed our plate and we're going to try and do the best we can," Schaefer said.
Schaefer has been working for over a year to try and bring the family some closure.
"At the time there were four key suspects in the investigation that I have picked up on since I took over the case," Schaefer said. "One of the four suspects have since died in Canada back in 1993. I visited with another suspect in Tampa, Fla., a couple of months ago, and there are two more out there. I know where they live. I want to go talk to them."
Schaefer said since looking at the four core suspects, there are others he has uncovered with the help of social media.
"But 33 years has come up now. The suspects are going to start dying off. That's why we have to start knocking on doors and finding them," Schaefer said. "I firmly believe whoever did this, if he or she is still alive, I don't and I hope they don't want to go to their grave knowing what they did back then."
Helen gave her sister Kelly a pin on her eighth birthday. It's a reminder Kelly wears around her neck of her baby sister, and her vow to never give up on finding her killer.
"I want to know what could a 13-year-old have done to someone that was so bad, that they felt so threatened they had to beat her body and take her life like that," Kelly said.
