Metro Nashville cold case detectives reopen 1969 unsolved murder case involving 12-year-old girl

Added: 2026-06-01

[00:00:00]57 years after 12-year-old Kathy Jones was found murdered in a vacant lot here in Nashville, Metro police detectives are still looking for her killer.

[00:00:07]>> This week, investigators with the cold case unit exhumed Kathy's body for a forensic review. Tonight, our Braden Ross again is speaking with a former detective on the case about what they might be hoping to find.

[00:00:20]>> November 29th, 1969, just before 8:00 p.m., 12-year-old Kathy Jones left her Woodbine home with her roller skates in hand bound for the roller drome on Thompson Lane.

[00:00:31]>> But she never came home.

[00:00:32]>> Investigators found Kathy's body in this vacant lot off Thompson Lane a few days later, but the way they collected evidence back then is a lot different than the way they would do it now.

[00:00:41]>> There was no autopsy.

[00:00:42]>> Kathy had been tied up, raped, and stabbed, but it was the person preparing her body for burial that found evidence she'd also been suffocated with her own clothing. Detectives worked the case for years that turned into decades, even arresting accused pedophile Edward Adcox for the crime in 1977, but without enough evidence, the charges were dropped.

[00:01:03]>> I've never killed anybody in my life.

[00:01:06]I just can't stand the sight of blood myself.

[00:01:09]>> Former Metro police detective Mickey Miller picked up the case again in the '90s.

[00:01:13]>> We did have some other suspects that we felt strongly about, but without the without technology of the evidence, there there's no way to say, really.

[00:01:23]>> In 2019, Olivia Lind kept the case alive in a seven-part deep dive podcast called Flat Rock.

[00:01:29]>> The reality is whoever did this is probably gone, but she still deserves at least justice in the form of answers.

[00:01:38]>> And this week, detectives took another huge step toward finding those answers, exhuming Kathy's body for more forensic testing.

[00:01:46]>> I was floored.

[00:01:48]>> It's kind of a long shot, you know, I think, but hopefully there's some forensic evidence that new DNA technology >> Because even after 57 years, it's never too late to close a case.

[00:02:01]>> That's important for future suspects to know.

[00:02:05]You know, we're not going anywhere. It might be 10, 15, 20, 50 years.

[00:02:10]But uh you know, you can still be caught.

[00:02:12]>> In South Nashville, Braden Ross, WSMV4.

[00:02:16]>> All right, Braden. Thank you. For context tonight, Kathy's case is one of more than 500 murder cases, cold cases I should say, that Metro Police are still investigating. That includes more than a dozen where the victim is still unidentified. So, this is a website that lists all of Metro Police's current cold cases. For police to consider it a case cold, it has to be at least a year old and have no viable leads. But their nine-person cold case unit is always looking for ways to advance them with new technologies or strategies.