In the autumn of 1987, Windy Patricia Gallagher was a bright and promising 16-year-old girl living in Griffith, Indiana. A junior at Calumet High School, she was known as an above-average student and an intellectual with a future full of potential. Windy was active and well-liked, serving as a member of the PomPom Squad and the manager of the swimming team. Born on December 7, 1970, she lived in an apartment with her mother and older sister, Christine. In her journal, Windy had looked forward to October 13, 1987, writing that it would be a "no worries day."
That evening, however, turned into a nightmare. Around 7:00 p.m., Christine came home to the apartment she shared with her sister and mother. After warming up a pizza, she went to the bedroom to check on Windy. There, she made a horrific discovery. Windy was on the floor, her hands tied behind her back with a bedsheet. She had been brutally stabbed 21 times in the neck and abdomen and mutilated.
The apartment showed no signs of forced entry.
The Griffith Police Department launched an intense investigation into the savage killing. Investigators found fingerprints on a water glass and a palm print on the bedroom wall. Witnesses reported seeing a suspicious man in the area, leading to the creation of a composite sketch, but the man's identity remained a mystery. The case took a significant turn due to a crime that had occurred the day before in Chicago. A woman named Tammy Lair was robbed at knifepoint, and her purse was stolen. A few days later, when her purse was recovered, she found a smaller grey clutch purse inside that did not belong to her. It belonged to Windy Gallagher.
The fingerprints from the Gallagher apartment and the interconnected crimes eventually pointed to one man: Michael Lee Lockhart, a drifter from Toledo, Ohio, with a criminal record. Lockhart was a serial killer engaged in a violent, multi-state crime spree. After murdering Windy, his rampage continued. In January 1988, he raped and murdered 14-year-old Jennifer Colhouer in Land O' Lakes, Florida, in a manner strikingly similar to Windy's killing.
Lockhart's spree ended on March 22, 1988, in Beaumont, Texas. While attempting to arrest Lockhart for driving a stolen Chevrolet Corvette, police officer Paul Douglas Hulsey Jr. was shot and killed by Lockhart. Lockhart was apprehended after a high-speed chase. Evidence found in the stolen car, along with the fingerprints from Windy's bedroom, definitively linked him to her murder. The palm print placed him right next to where Windy's body was found.
Michael Lee Lockhart was charged and convicted of murder in Indiana for the death of Windy Gallagher and was sentenced to death in July 1989. He also received death sentences in Texas for the murder of Officer Hulsey and in Florida for the murder of Jennifer Colhouer. He once boasted of killing more than two dozen people but later admitted to the three murders for which he was convicted. On December 9, 1997, Lockhart was executed by lethal injection in Texas, bringing an end to his reign of terror. The execution offered a final, somber resolution for the families of his victims, though it could never erase their pain.
