In the winter of 1984, the quiet community of Ellicott City, Maryland, was unsettled by the disappearance of a long-time resident. Iva Myrtle Watson, an 81-year-old woman, was reported missing on December 29th. The following day, a grim discovery was made. Her body was found under the shelter of pine trees directly across the street from her home on Montgomery Road. The cause of death was determined to be multiple traumas to the head.
The partially clothed state of her body suggested a brutal assault had occurred.
For decades, the case of Iva Myrtle Watson’s death remained a painful open wound for her family and the community, a cold case with few leads. Investigators diligently pursued any information, but the trail to her killer grew cold. The years stretched into decades, and the hope of finding justice for Iva seemed to fade with the passage of time. Her murder was one of several unsolved cases that cast a long shadow over Howard and Baltimore counties, leaving a sense of unease and unanswered questions.
A significant breakthrough finally came more than 30 years later. In March 2015, a Howard County grand jury indicted 59-year-old Vernon Lee Clark for the murder of Iva Myrtle Watson. At the time of the indictment, Clark was already serving three life sentences for the murders of three other women in the 1980s. Investigators had long suspected him due to the similarities between Iva's murder and his other known crimes. His violent history included the 1980 stabbing death of 70-year-old Rebecca H. “Dolly” Davis, the 1981 beating death of 68-year-old Evelyn Dieterich, and the 1989 sexual assault and shooting death of 23-year-old Kathleen Patricia Gouldin.
Faced with the new indictment and evidence from the cold case investigation, Vernon Lee Clark confessed. In November 2015, he pleaded guilty to the first-degree murder of Iva Myrtle Watson. In his confession, he admitted to sexually assaulting and killing the elderly woman. With his plea, another life sentence was added to his existing terms of imprisonment. The resolution of the case, made possible by the persistent efforts of the Howard County Police Department's Cold Case Unit, finally brought a measure of closure to Iva Watson's grandchildren and great-grandchild, who were present in the courtroom to witness the end of their long wait for justice.
