Edward George McGregor

At approximately 11:45 p.m. on April 17, 1990, the Missouri City police department received a frantic 911 call from a woman identifying herself as 38-year-old Kim Louis Wildman.^[2] Wildman reportedly was crying out for help claiming to have been stabbed multiple times in her home by a black man.^[3] The call abruptly ended, and police cars hurriedly drove to her home, and when they arrived they forced themselves in and found her nude body on the kitchen floor.^[2] It was later concluded that the killer entered the home through an unlocked window and that Wildman was likely asleep when she was attacked.^[4] Since she did not identify the attacker during the call, the recording was forwarded to the FBI for further investigation.^[2] At the same time, Missouri City detectives investigated Wildman's neighbors, including McGregor, at the time a 17-year-old who lived two houses down, who denied having any involvement in her death.^[5] Despite an extensive investigation, with even the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) putting up a $1,000 bounty to find the killer, the case stalled and the only piece of evidence of the perpetrator was his DNA.^[3] In 2001, the DNA was entered into the Combined DNA Index System (CODIS), but this failed to turn up any suspects.^[6]

On May 25, 1994, at approximately 2:20 am, the neighbors of Edwina Latriss Barnum, 23, noticed her apartment door was slightly ajar. Upon realizing it had been kicked in they contacted the apartment management and entered the apartment. In the bathroom they located her dead body.^[7] Responding officers arrived, and along with a subsequent autopsy, they concluded that the killer had used a belt to strangle Barnum to death.^[8] They also stated that she had been murdered a few hours beforehand, likely when she returned home from work, and that the killer followed her back to the apartment. Investigators struggled to find potential suspects, and the case went cold.^[7] In 2004, on the ten-year anniversary of the murder, Barnum's mother, Betty Gregory, contacted the Houston Police Department pleading for a re-investigation. In a press conference for the ten-year anniversary, Gregory requested the department to open its own cold case unit.^[9]

At around 1 p.m. on August 5, 2005, the roommates of 28-year-old Danielle Subjects let themselves into her home in South Houston and discovered her nude body lying over her partially filled bathtub.^[10] The previous day, Subjects had dropped off her two children at a daycare before returning home, and investigators believe she was killed at around 10:30 am.^[11] She had been stripped, sexually assaulted, and strangled to death, with her killer subsequently ransacking the house and rummaging through her purse before leaving.^[12] Male DNA was discovered at the crime scene.^[11]

In the morning hours of February 4, 2006, at approximately 11:50 am, friends who came to visit 25-year-old Mandy Rubin in her apartment noticed that her door was unlocked. They called security personnel who arrived and discovered Rubin's body posed in her bathtub.^[13] No signs of forced entry were found during the investigation, but investigators suspected that due to marks on the body, Rubin likely fought with her killer.^[14] She too was sexually assaulted.^[14]

While investigating the murders of Subjects of Rubin, police noticed that the same phone number contacted the women just prior to their murders.^[15] Police identified the caller as McGregor, a resident of Houston who was a UPS delivery driver of eleven years and who lived in the same apartment building as Rubin.^[16] In April 2006, investigators in Missouri City were notified about McGregor, as he was making plans to leave Houston and move into his childhood home.^[6] Afterwards, former detectives with the Wildman case noticed that McGregor's former address was on the same street as Wildman's, and he was named the case's prime suspect shortly after. Investigators interviewed McGregor who again denied having murdered Wildman and voluntarily let police swab his mouth for DNA testing.^[17] When the results came back, his DNA was a match to the DNA found on Wildman's body, and on May 1 police pulled McGregor over as he was on route during his shift; he surrendered without incident and was taken into custody.^[5][18][19] McGregor was held on $1,000,000 bail, which was later reduced to $250,000 which he posted, and he was released from police custody later in May.^[18] His release sparked uproar in the community, and many Houston area residents protested outside his house.^[20]

On December 1, McGregor was re-arrested after his DNA was matched to Barnum's murder.^[7] For this he was jailed with a $750,000 bond.^[8] During his incarceration, McGregor was housed with a cellmate named Adam Osani. According to Osani, McGregor would often insult and fight him. On one occasion Osani claimed that a neighboring cellmate, Marvin Paxton, yelled at McGregor to leave Osani alone to which, according to both Paxton and Osani, McGregor blurted out "Bitch, I'll kill you like I did to those other two bitches".^[8]