So Innocent Yet So Dead

Book excerpt: On October 6, 1990, during a family weekend at an antique mall in Beaumont, Texas, Joe and Elaine Langley's life changed forever. Their 10-year-old daughter, Falyssa Van Winkle, disappeared while buying peanuts just a few yards away. Five hours later her body was found under a remote rural bridge 80 miles away from where she had been raped and strangled. Starting with hundreds of potential witnesses and suspects who were at the mall, a team of investigators from throughout Southeast Texas quickly narrowed their focus to a 44-year-old vendor and family acquaintenance named James Rexford Powell. Seen through the eyes of a veteran sex crime detective who helped lead the search for Falyssa Van Winkle's killer, this is a chronicle of the investigation, arrest and subsequent trial of a man whose profile is all too familiar to police, and can be found much closer to home than any parent can bear to imagine.