Roy Dabney, who is serving a 25-year prison sentence in Fort Stockton, was back in Houston this week to hear the latest charges against him. Investigators say DNA evidence discovered with new testing is what helped them solve the 17- and 14-year-old cases.
On Feb. 28, 2007, Hattie McFarland, 43, was found beaten to death in a white abandoned house on Davis Street. Police discovered a bloody brick next to Hattie's body. At the time, no eyewitnesses came forward and no physical evidence was ever tested, according to court documents.
Three years later, in July 2010, police found Lavenia Glover, 28, facedown, dead on a mattress in a brick house on Newhoff Street, about a half mile from where McFarland's body was left. The crime scenes were similar; Glover's skull was also bashed in, police say.
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"Both women were sex workers, both were exactly 125 pounds, had a shortened stature," HPD Sgt. Mike Burrow, who recently began taking a second look at both unsolved murders, said.
Police found a man's DNA on Glover, but had no leads. A woman reported seeing Glover walking with a man wearing a blue and white striped shirt and black shorts. Detectives found video of that man in a nearby convenience store, but investigators weren't able to identify him at the time. The case went cold.
"All we had was a face on a camera," Burrow said.
Then, in 2012, they got a name: Roy Dabney.
When Dabney was convicted of cocaine possession, his DNA went into CODIS, the FBI national DNA database, and Houston police got a hit on Glover's case. Investigators now knew it was his DNA on her body, they say. They were also able to link him to another high-profile case.
In 2006, an 11-year-old girl was picked up, sexually assaulted, then left on the side of Polly Street. Investigators confirmed Dabney's DNA was on her too, and in 2013, Dabney was convicted and sentenced to 25 years in prison for aggravated sexual assault.
But Glover's case was never closed, despite the 2012 DNA findings until Sgt. Burrow took another look this year. Upon doing that, he realized McFarland's similar murder was also still unsolved.
"We thought that there were opportunities to test items of evidence that had never been tested before," Burrow said.
So the sergeant had the bloody brick from McFarland's murder tested, along with more items from Glover's sexual assault kit. Investigators say Dabney's DNA was overwhelmingly present.
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Police also compared the surveillance video to Dabney's prior booking photos, confirming the man in the blue and white shirt was him.
"It's hard to call families out of the blue," said Burrow, who has been in touch with families of Glover and McFarland. "It kind of brings back a flood of emotions for them. But it does feel good to bring justice to those cases."
As Dabney was arraigned Wednesday for the two cold case murders, he said nothing in court. The state announced they had DNA proving he killed Hattie and Lavenia.
"Color me unimpressed by saying DNA is going to tie him to these cases," Jason Marquez, Dabney's court-appointed attorney, said. "It's faulty science. (DNA) in and of itself is not enough."
"DNA helps us solve (cold) cases more than anything," Sepi Zimmer, a Harris County prosecutor who works on cold cases, said. "I think there's a lot of people out there that think they've gotten away with these crimes, and I want to tell them they have not. We are working these cold cases. We are trying to solve them. And we are going to prosecute them."
Investigators believe it's possible Dabney could have other victims. We reached out to him to ask about the allegations, but he did not respond to our interview requests.
Dabney is eligible for parole next year. If he gets out of prison, he'll go straight to the Harris County jail, because the judge set his bond at $2 million for both murders.
If prosecutors don't offer Dabney a plea deal, they say they're prepared to take him to trial.
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