Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Happy Friday, crime junkies. I know you don't normally hear from me today, but I had to make sure that you heard the big news in the Lovers Lane murder case that we covered in March of 2025.
Chapter 2: What is the latest update on the Lovers' Lane murders?
There has been an arrest. Now, if any of the details of this case are fuzzy to you, I've attached the whole episode to this update. And at the end, I'm going to pop back in to tell you who they've arrested, what we know about the guy, and what investigators are asking you to still help with.
Now, if you remember the case well, check the show notes for a time code, and then you can jump right to the update. When 19-year-old Shane Henry pulls up to give her older sister Cheryl a ride to work on the morning of August 23rd, 1990, she does what most teenagers do in the pre-cell dark ages. She lays on the horn and waits.
Shane's got to get to work herself, so she's like a little peeved when she has to go inside. More peeved when she realizes that Cheryl isn't even there. If she was going to like catch a ride or not go or not be there, like a heads up would have been nice.
Mm-hmm.
But now Shane is running late, so she kind of just like scoots without giving it much more thought. At least not until she gets a call at work that morning at around 10 a.m. And it's a friend and a co-worker of Cheryl's, and she wants to know where Cheryl is because she just hasn't shown. And that's when Shane's stomach drops, although she's not quite sure why.
Because she knows that Cheryl was out the night before with her new boyfriend, Andy Atkinson. Like, Shane had actually been out with them, too. She dipped around 11 to give the lovebirds some, like, time alone, some space. So in her mind, the most likely scenario is that her sister just overslept or something.
But still, Shane can't kick this uneasy feeling, so she actually asks for permission to leave work early. She's told no, though, which... I feel like it's pretty messed up, like if you think your sister is missing. And before long, like the whole family knows what's going on. The whole family is worried.
And Shane just wants to join Cheryl's friends and family who are already out there looking for her. So girl is out the door the second her shift is up, racing to the family home where her mom, Barbara, and her stepdad, Dan, are waiting anxiously. Now, by now, hours have passed since everyone has realized that Cheryl was missing.
But where's Andy?
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Chapter 3: What happened to Cheryl Henry and Andy Atkinson on August 23, 1990?
And so that's when he decided to check it out. And the windows were rolled down, the seats were reclined, And the key was in the ignition in the idle position.
Those are all very bad signs.
Right, red flags, which is why he called them. So that's the scene when Cheryl's family and friends start showing up, desperate to find some sign of the missing couple. And right away, they zero in on some cigarette butts stained with lipstick on the ground near the car. The lipstick looks a whole lot like it was Cheryl's. And when they peek inside the car...
They see something that the security guard hadn't mentioned, something more ominous than lipstick stains on cigarette butts. They see deep, dark stains on the inside of the driver's door.
Blood?
They're not sure. but it looks an awful lot like blood. So much so that they do a kind of like back away slowly kind of thing. Like the last thing they want to do is contaminate what could be evidence.
But how did the security guard miss that? I mean, wasn't he in the car?
Well, in this area, there are no streetlights and it's dark by now. So my guess is that the headlights from all the cars that are now there from everyone who came, maybe he's making it easier to see. They also probably are like bringing lights in. I don't know. Whatever they have is definitely more light than like a lone patrol car would have provided.
And Andy's car battery is dead from the car being left in idle. So there probably were no overhead lights like at the time. Now, in 1990, no one has a cell to call 911. And by the time they see all of this, the security guard is like on the other side of that big field walking the tree line with one of Cheryl's friends. They're just like searching over there.
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Chapter 4: What clues did investigators find near the abandoned car?
And, you know, because of all this transparency that he was giving them, Shane actually shared a 2005 email chain with us. It was between them and Detective Belk, or Detective Belk and Barbara. And... In this, Detective Belk lists out all of the men who have been excluded based on the DNA evidence, which at that time was 17 names deep.
He even assures them that in this list, the infamous railroad killer Rafael Resendez has been ruled out thanks to CODIS. Now, just for clarification, like no one has placed this guy in Houston at the time of the murders as far as I know. But like I know he was in the state in July of 91 when he killed a man in San Antonio. And that's like three and a half hours away from Houston.
But like, duh, he's the railroad killer. Right. Like dude got around. I don't have any context about like how or why or when he slid on the investigation's radar. So giant grain of salt here. I was just like, I was surprised to see his name on that list. I thought it was worth mentioning. But here's his name of people who are ruled out. They're obviously trying. They're working hard.
By 2007, though, Detective Belk has come to terms with the fact that his dreams of solving the case before he retires actually might elude him. He's been with HPD by that point for 20 years and like it's his time. So he turns in his badge and gun admitting this kind of defeat for him, like his great white whale got away.
But to be a fly on the wall when his phone rings the very next week and he's told that this could be it. They finally got a hit in CODIS after all these years, except there's always an except, right? The hit isn't a person that they've linked to his case. They've linked his case to another case. A brutal, like with a capital B, sexual assault case also there in Houston.
So this guy is still there? Not so fast. The sexual assault wasn't recent. In fact, it happened two months before Cheryl and Andy were killed.
I'm sorry, the backlog is that deep?
I have no idea why, but the victim's sexual assault kit was never processed for 17 years.
I was going to say for almost decades.
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