Nydia Lopez-Garcia, a 37-year-old single mother from Mesquite, Texas, had traveled to Las Vegas and was murdered in a hotel room on the Las Vegas Strip. The children - aged 17, 14, and 7 - were with their mother in Las Vegas and now find themselves stuck there, without any family or means to return home.

In 1974, 17-year-old cheerleader Carla Walker went missing after a Valentine's Day dance in Fort Worth. Her body was found a few days later, in a ditch, strangled, beaten, and sexually assaulted. The case went unsolved for 46 years until DNA evidence was finally able to match a longtime suspect.

Carl “Coral” Eugene Watts (November 7, 1953 – September 21, 2007), was an American serial killer dubbed "The Sunday Morning Slasher" who murdered numerous women and girls over an 8-year period. He is suspected of being the most prolific serial killer in United States history with up to 100 possible murders.

Joseph Douglas Ball (January 7, 1896 – September 24, 1938), also known as the "Alligator Man," the "Butcher of Elmendorf," and the "Bluebeard of South Texas," was an American serial killer. He was known to have killed two and is suspected of killing as many as 20 women in the 1930s.