On the first day of 2004, the nude body of 23-year-old Patsy Laverne Leonard, a white female from Wichita Falls, Texas, was discovered in a shallow creek in Pottawatomie County, Oklahoma. Her body had been dropped from a bridge near the intersection of Interstate 40 and State Highway 99. An autopsy later confirmed that she had been strangled, and her death was officially ruled a homicide.
Patsy was last seen alive on December 21, 2003, when she left a hotel room in her hometown of Wichita Falls to go to a nearby convenience store. Her boyfriend, Herman Ladell Johnson, reported her missing six days later on December 27th. Investigators learned that Leonard had a history of prostitution convictions in Texas.
Authorities quickly noted the chilling similarities between Patsy's murder and a string of other unsolved killings across Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, and Mississippi that began in 1999. Investigators believe she was one of at least ten women preyed upon by a suspected serial killer, thought to be a long-haul truck driver who targeted women at truck stops along interstate highways. Many of the victims were involved in prostitution and, like Patsy, were found nude in rural areas, often discarded from bridges.
In February 2004, law enforcement agencies from the various states involved convened in Oklahoma City to share information and coordinate their investigative efforts in the hopes of identifying the person responsible for this series of brutal murders. At one point, a man named Cory Morris, who confessed to killing six women in Arizona, was considered a person of interest due to similarities in the victim profiles and the methods of body disposal. However, he was later ruled out as a suspect in Patsy Leonard's case. To date, no arrests have been made in connection with the murder of Patsy Laverne Leonard, and her case remains unsolved.
