REOPENED: Sisters In Death

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This episode contains descriptions of violence and sexual assault.

Listen or discretion is advised.

When my grandmother passed away, I inherited a metal box.

It contains original newspaper articles,

Wiling and Lily's death certificates.

It was her collection of any kind of investigative material.

This crime was extremely horrific.

It just doesn't even seem like another human being would be capable of this.

My family was ripped apart on her deathbed.

My grandmother told me never to forget to keep fighting for the family

and getting justice for my two aunts, Wiling and Lily.

There are 120,000 unsolved murders in America.

Each one is a cold case.

Only one percent are ever solved.

This is one of those rare stories.

It's the morning of March 5th, 1984, in the neighborhood known as the Heights in Houston, Texas.

The historic neighborhood is known for its artistic culture and vibrant scene.

Creatives flock to the area to do what they love among people who have similar outlooks on life.

It's exactly where the Kennedy sisters, 23-year-old Lily, and 33-year-old Wiling want to be.

Wiling is a stained glass artist who adores the arts and music.

She loves living in an area where she can walk to a club and listen to live music,

and she loves having her sister, Lily, stay with her.

Wiling and Lily's father, Jack Kennedy, also lives nearby in the Heights.

On this particular morning, he's waiting to drive his daughters to a doctor's appointment,

but they're late.

Jack decides to walk over to the house around the corner, and when he arrives,

he immediately notices that something isn't right.

The front door is open.

Jack runs inside and finds Wiling lying on the ground in the entryway.

Lily is lying at her feet.

Neither of his daughters are breathing, so Jack calls 911 and begs for medical assistance.

There is nothing that can be done.

Wiling and Lily are dead.

Houston police officers quickly arrive at the scene and begin taking notes on the injury

seen on the victim's bodies.

Lily appears to have sustained a single gunshot wound to the head.

There isn't much blood on the carpet beneath her,

and there are no wounds on her hands or feet to indicate that she had a chance to defend herself.

It's safe for the officers to assume she had been killed first.

Wiling had suffered more obvious and severe injuries.

She had been gagged, and her underwear had been pulled down.

Blood is pooled beneath her body, and there are knife wounds on her throat.

There's also a wound on her arm that looks like a gunshot.

Wiling and Lily's cousin, Deborah,

watches helplessly as Jack reacts to finding his daughters.

My uncle was shaking uncontrollably and crying uncontrollably.

Oh, I don't know how he even stood up, seeing that scene.

Sergeant Bob D'Alone and the other officers can tell

that the killer had focused their rage on Wiling.

Whoever had taken her life had spent some significant time harming Wiling.

She was abused if not tortured prior to her death.

I feel like Wiling was the target, and it's Lily.

She was just used as another way to torture Wiling by killing her first.

While the detectives continue searching for a motive,

the victim's niece, Jackie, and the rest of their family

try to confront the senseless loss.

I used to spend the night at that house with my mom, was crying,

because she knew I could have been there.

Wiling and Lily are my aunts.

Wiling loved dancing, and was very social.

She had a vintage clothing store,

in the house, and she had a vintage clothing store.

She had a vintage clothing store, in the Heights area.

The vintage clothing store was Wiling's passion.

That was her goal to find the most unique pieces of clothing she could.

I love going to visit my aunt Wiling and spending the weekend with her,

because we would go to unusual places, clothing shopping,

so some of the clothes I would wear to school, no one else had them.

Wiling was always very energetic outgoing.

She accepted absolutely everybody.

She was a great person to look up to.

Lily was a little more subdued, more calm,

and very honest, I'd say, within herself.

Lily was more like your girl next door, soft-spoken, but very goofy.

She's the type that would go and play pool with the boys.

At the bar, my first footsteps were from my grandmother to Lily.

She was a big sister to me.

Then all of a sudden, my aunts aren't there.

They're just taken away from me.

It was unbelievable. It was probably the most horrific day of my whole life.

It was like a horror movie for Wiling,

being tortured the last hour of her life.

Crime scene investigators go over every inch of the house,

and they start to build a picture of what happened on the morning of this double murder.

There is no sign of forced entry,

so it seems as though the sisters knew the person well enough to let them inside.

And from there, things escalated.

Bloody footprints are found throughout the house.

The footprints have a distinctive, wavy design, like an athletic shoe.

Another footprint, with the same pattern,

is found around the corner and down the street from the murder scene,

giving investigators a hint as to where the killer came from, or ran to.

It doesn't look to be a typical robbery gone wrong.

As a couch cushion had been taken from Wiling's couch,

and the investigators wonder if the killer had been looking for something specific.

There's been a couple of rumors.

Wiling has said to have told an associate that she had hidden some cocaine from her boyfriend

in a cushion on the couch.

But there was no evidence whatsoever of any kind of dope, anything of that nature.

She was a very neat, tidy person,

but the house was ransacked and things were missing.

That would indicate somebody's looking for something,

but there was $500 cash, and there was jewelry left in the house,

but the amount of energy expended on Wiling led me to believe that somebody that wanted something

from her, or she had really, really made somebody mad.

The double murder shocks the neighborhood, but the tortuous behavior of the killer puts pressure

on the investigators to find the person responsible, fast. They begin canvassing the heights,

looking for anyone who had seen or heard anything unusual the night of the murders.

One neighbor recalls Lily knocking at her door at around 11 p.m.

She said that she had sprained her ankle and she asked for an ace bandage,

but everything seemed to be fine. Another neighbor says that she heard loud noises and

shouting and what she thought were very loud thumping sounds at around 6.630 that morning.

The noises could well have been gunshots since Wiling and Lily had both sustained gunshot wounds.

A third neighbor helps the police narrow down the timeline and provides what could be a description

of the killer. At 6.30 or so he had gone out to get in a truck to get ready to go to work.

They see a guy come around the corner and he's carrying a multi-colored blanket and some clothing

inside and he's stumbling around and dropping stuff. What are you doing here? Why do I look like

a burglar? Yes you do. Well, I'm really embarrassed. My girlfriend and I just had a big argument

and she threw me out and this is the stuff I've gotten I'm just heading on out. That was the

extent of that exchange. The person that was seen by the witness was rather clumsy and he dropped

a cushion from a love seat. I had documented a cushion missing from a full love seat from the

house and lo and behold it's discovered around the corner. We found it and it had blood on it.

It was torn open but there was nothing in it. The fact that the man had been

carrying a cushion confirms that he had been inside Wileen's house which meant that the

investigators had a witness, one who could help them prepare a composite sketch. Composite

sketches are based on the description of a suspect by a witness and they can potentially open

dozens of leads. The first time I saw the composite drawing it could be anybody it just looked

like a man to me. It was nobody I recognized. Unfortunately no one seems to recognize the suspect

from the sketch and the police continue to canvas the neighborhood while the medical examiner

performs the autopsies on the victims. Lily had been shot in the back of the head. The bullet had

been lodged in her skull but the catastrophic damage it caused led to her death. Wileen had been

cut on her neck with a knife at least four times. She had died from blood loss as a result.

Sexual assault examinations are conducted by the examiner on both victims. No seminal fluid

is found on Lily's swab but there is semen present on Wileen's swab. In 1984 the testing that

can be performed on seminal fluid is limited to narrowing down the person's blood type. DNA

testing is still a developing technology. The investigators yield no further clues from the autopsy

reports so they turn to Lily and Wileen's father Jack to see if he knows anyone who has a grudge

against his daughters. Jack had some reservations immediately about Wileen's former boyfriend

and Jack didn't shy away from having some thoughts not positive about Lily's ex-husband.

Unfortunately Wileen and Lily both I guess you would say weren't good at picking men.

Jack also tells the detectives that Lily's ex-husband has recently made some threats

and Wileen's ex-boyfriend is involved with drugs. The investigators have two viable suspects,

the victim's exes and there is every likelihood that the killer is one of them.

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Why lean in our boyfriend are not together at the time of the murders, but they had been in contact.

Why lean in Lily's relatives have their suspicions about who had a motive to kill them.

After the murders happened, it became clear that Why lean's boyfriend had been involved in drug

dealing. My family was convinced it was him. As a child, I knew Why lean's boyfriend,

as an uncle. He, to me, was a part of my family. I have a lot of great memories spending time

with him. He was outgoing, made a lot of people laugh, so it was very hurtful for me to think

that he had harmed my aunt. The police interview Why lean's ex-boyfriend. They are hopeful that they

can close the case quickly, but her ex is cooperative. He doesn't ask for a lawyer and is open

about his involvement with drugs. He's even willing to go in a lineup so the neighbors who saw a man

in the area can see if he matches the description. The witness doesn't recognize him, and to fully

clear his name, Why lean's ex takes a polygraph test. He passes with flying colors.

With one ex in the clear, the police turned their attention to Lily's ex-husband.

The 10-year-old gap between the sisters meant that they hadn't been especially close until

they had both graduated from high school. As adults, they developed a close bond, and when Lily

needed support, she turned to her older sister Why lean. Lily had been staying with Why lean to

escape a turbulent marriage. Her divorce had gone through just days before she was killed.

Information came from the family members that he had made threats to harm her. Certainly,

the overwhelming number of victims know their assailants in the first place, but now we've got

an ex-husband. We interviewed him in Hasadina, which is a suburb city. We found that he was big and

strong and strapping, and not anything resembling the drawing. Also, he was done crutches. We found

that he had had surgery and had to have discs removed. Doctors at the hospital confirmed that there

was no way Lily's ex would have been physically capable of committing the double murder,

and with that, the only viable lead in the case disappears.

It's disheartening to the detectives who have spent 10 days trying to track down the sadistic killer,

and they turned to Why lean's friends and associates to get an idea of the lifestyle she had

been living. She was just a young, beautiful woman wanting to have fun in many ways and

experience many in many ways. Being in the partying atmosphere, you are exposed to being around all

sorts of people. Some of the people in the vintage clothing business were really, really into some

cocaine dealing. Not to imply that she was a part of that, but had some associates that

gave us pause. We spent some time pursuing leads at Why lean's ex-boyfriend had been involved with

stealing some drugs from some people. We spent a lot of time searching for people that might have

been seeking revenge on him through the girls. There was a lot of dead ends.

After two weeks, the case has stalled, but then, a tipster calls crime stoppers and claims

that he has seen shoe treads similar to those reported in Why lean's house.

The police head to an alley by a small apartment around the corner from the crime scene,

where the anonymous caller reported seeing the distinctive wayby shoe treads.

Sergeant Deloney has a good feeling about the lead when he spots the footprints in front of the door

to the apartment. The occupant did not speak English. I speak Spanish, so I was able to converge

with him. He granted us entrance to his house, and immediately we found 24 marijuana cigarettes,

and we found LSD in her freezer and found a big pistol that he had wrapped up. It turned out

he was unlawfully in this country. We took him into custody, and we immediately it's a bit

of the shoes to the crime lab. This offered hope and promise, but his shoes did not match

the pattern from the house. The gun was tested. It was obvious that it had not fired the bullets.

Our joy was short lived. He was not our guy. We were back to square one. We were striking out.

It's definitely disappointing.

The investigators aren't ready to give up. Sergeant Deloney still can't forget seeing Jack

Kennedy after he had found his daughter's murdered in such a horrifying way. But it's been three

months, and Wiley and Lily's loved ones are mired in a state of grief and despair.

The thoughts never leave your mind. How can this person get by with murdering two young women,

and then there's no word, no evidence, nobody says anything. The murder is never going to be found.

The trauma has a lasting impact on Jackie, the victim's niece, who's just 11 years old at the time.

At such a young age and fifth grade, all I could think about if that happened to my aunts,

anybody could break into the house and kill me. I had difficulty sleeping,

walking around the house, locking doors, locking windows. Every adult around me was completely

falling apart. It felt like I had to, even though I was so young, I just, I had to be strong.

My grandfather, as a father, finding his daughters like that. He had PTSD. He had nightmares.

Wiley and Lily's parents had separated after many years of marriage, and they're already

strained relationship worsened as their mother rose, felt that their fathers should have known more

because he lived so close to Wiley and Lily. Jack Kennedy blamed himself for not being there to

protect his daughters, and the tragedy has a ripple effect throughout the entire family.

My mom went down a very bad path. She didn't know how to live after this.

The leads dwindle, months pass, and nothing new comes up. After two years, the case of the murdered

Kennedy sisters goes cold. Crime stoppers victims advocate Andy Kahn knows how stalled

investigations impact those left behind. I can tell you from someone who's worked with homicide

survivors now for almost just about 30 years to have a case like that go cold. It's got a null

issue. It scares you because you think the same thing is going to happen to you or to your child,

like my only daughter could somebody come back and do that to her. It's so hard to think that a

murderer got away. Wiley and Lily's mother rose makes it her life's work to ensure her daughter's

stories are not forgotten. On each of the anniversaries of the murders, Rose visits the grave sites

and contacts media outlets to keep the tragedy in the minds of the public. It's 2007 and after

decades without a decent lead, Jackie Elliott carries on her grandmother's fight for justice for

Wiley and Lily. When my grandmother has to weigh, most people inherit a jewelry box. I inherited

a metal box. It contains original newspaper articles and has a newspaper clipping of the

composite drawing. It was her collection of any kind of investigative material on her deathbed.

My grandmother told me never to forget and tried to make sure I continue the effort of

getting this story out there. Jackie spent her life looking for ways that the case would get

known and that the murderer could be found. Seven more years pass and it's now 2014. Three decades

since Jackie's aunts were murdered. On the 30th year anniversary, I decided to pick up the phone

and call it Houston Police Department. I was nervous. They connected me to the cold case

detective. I was able to find out some great news. The Houston Police cold case detective

assigned to the case found that there was still a viable sample of fluids that had been collected

by the medical examiner at the time of the autopsy. The sample is sent off to the lab and a DNA

profile is developed. There is finally some substantial evidence that can definitively connect

someone to the crime, but they just have to find a suspect to compare it to.

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a DNA profile provides a much needed way of hope. But that hope is quickly dashed when no

matches are found on the national DNA database, CODIS. It's now September 10th, 2014,

and a single phone call to Indiana attorney, Roy Dominguez, changes everything.

I got a phone call early morning, maybe 12, 31 o'clock in the morning from someone

who was in jail in our community in Lake County, Indiana. This person who might have met before

an important matter to discuss about a cold case in Houston, Texas.

A defendant who has been convicted and sentenced spend a long time behind bars,

wants to barter some of his information for his freedom. He mentioned the Kennedy sisters,

but he right away mentioned who had committed these murders. The name of the murderer was Edmond

Deegan. That morning I called Houston Police Department. The cold case investigator

travels to meet with the jailhouse informant. He tells the investigator that Edmond Deegan

came to him back in 1984 in Houston and asked for his help. So my client and Edmond Deegan

or associates, Deegan came over and with the deathful bag with stuff in there,

Deegan told my client that he had just killed two people and that he needed to get rid of the

evidence. They asked my client for a sledgehammer because he'd also had a gun and a knife,

but he wrote into pieces. He had the purse and some person would be longings that be longed

to the Kennedy sisters. They went in the back and they started a fire and he threw the items in there.

The investigator begins to cross-reference the information that's provided and learns that

Deegan was working in the same circles as Wylene in the vintage clothing business.

My uncle, the brother of Wylene and Lily, immediately recognized the name Edmond Deegan,

being one of Wylene's business associates and had met Edmond Deegan. So it was a little startling

that it was someone that Wylene actually knew. The Houston Police tracked down Deegan and

questioned him on December 9th, 2014. Deegan denies having any sexual relationship with Wylene

or being present on the night of the double homicide, but he agrees to come back to the station

two days later and speak with detectives again. I appreciate you coming then on the no problem.

And I'll be honest with you, somebody's naming you. This is not me.

Three years later. Right. And they've got it. Okay. It's not me, Officer.

On the up, but I did not kill anybody. Honestly, what I believe is that you did go over there

and you did get involved in this whole thing. I promise you, I did not kill anyone. I don't

care what anybody says. I was not involved in that murder of that girl. Right. It's not true,

Officer. I mean, I'm serious. You want to give me a swap? Like like a bucket swap? Sure, I

guess to help. I mean, I don't have any choice. Well, just better if you just go along with it.

Deegan continues to deny any part in the murders, but he agrees to a buckle swab on the inside

of his mouth, which provides the investigators with his DNA. The swab is sent to the lab to be

compared to the sample taken during Wylene's autopsy. And while they are awaiting the results,

Jackie is confident that they will finally be able to put a name to the sketch, made 30 years

earlier. I believe that the composite drawing from the neighbor was Deegan,

to compare a picture of Deegan at that time of his life to the composite drawing. You will see

how similar both look to each other. On December 26, the results come back and Deegan

cannot be excluded. They have their guy, and it is a one in a 1.4 billion match.

The finding and the chance of long awaited justice feels bittersweet.

It's very sad that my grandmother, my grandfather and my mother did not live long enough to see the arrest.

Edmund Deegan was arrested for the murders of Wylene and Lily, but the prosecutor was very

clear to me that this case was going to be hard, just because someone raped someone

doesn't automatically mean they murdered them. Unfortunately, other than the DNA, there's no other

tangible evidence. Without a strong enough case against Deegan to try him for both murders,

the prosecutors are forced to make a deal. They could connect them to Wylene's death by the DNA

evidence, but not Lily's death, so Deegan is offered a plea bargain. If he pleaded guilty to

Wylene's murder, he would avoid the rape charges. Lily was not listed on the charge sheet, leaving

her as an unnamed victim. Deegan accepts the deal, and as a result receives a 15-year sentence

for Wylene's murder. For Edmund Deegan, that was the deal of a lifetime.

Was I happy with that? No. A human's life to steal one, and the private one is worth more than that,

and it wouldn't hurt to know precisely what happened that morning. I believe that he went

to find cocaine, according to the story, that she had some hidden from her ex-boyfriend,

and things did not proceed the way he anticipated, but he did have a weapon with him. He had two

weapons with him. And when things went south, he ended up using those weapons.

While the short sentence leaves Jackie and her family reeling, there is one more crushing

blow of injustice ahead. In December 2021, Edmund Deegan is released from prison after serving

just a few years of his sentence. The murderer, Deegan, is back on the streets.

He's out whether I like it or anyone likes it. A Texas law led him out after serving less than

seven years of a 15-year sentence. I had such a difficult time, but Andy has been a major support

to me. He was the one that helped me learn and understand the law and why all these things were

happening. This quirky law that Texas enacted in 1977 to alleviate prison overcrowding,

it's called a mandatory release law. Basically stated, any inmate, it didn't matter if you

murdered somebody, if you raped somebody, even if you were a serial killer, who committed a crime

in Texas between 1977 and 1987 was eligible for automatic release as long as they maintain

good behavior in prison. I guess they never thought that the after-effects will haunt this state

forever. Six years, really? For such a violent, disgusting act, the only place he belongs is behind bars

or in a grave. I've been told he's not allowed to be in Harris County, here in Houston,

for the next 10 years. You're asking for a criminal to follow rules when they've broken so many

already. Honestly, the only way I'm ever going to feel safe in this world is going to be either

me dying or him dying.

Wylene and Lily Kennedy have not been forgotten, and thanks to their dedicated family members,

their memory will live on. I miss them, and I want to hold them, and I want them back. I want to see

their small, big faces. I love them, Wylene and Lily. Even if they're not physically here with me to

help me through this, they're still around me. They're like my angels.

Cold Case Files is hosted by Paula Barros. It's produced by the Lawn Crime Network,

and written by Ilene McFarlane and Emily G. Thompson. Our composer is Blake Maples.

For A&E, our senior producer is John Thrasher, and our supervising producer is McCamey Lynn.

Our executive producers are Jesse Katz, Mite Kweva, and Peter Tarshis.

This podcast is based on A&E's Emmy-winning TV series Cold Case Files.

For more Cold Case Files, visit A&ETV.com.

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