A 25 year old woman is found stabbed to death in her home In the small town of Comanche, Oklahoma, the summer of 1988 began with a brutal act that would leave a lasting scar on the community. On the morning of June 4th, 25-year-old Mary Pewitt was found dead in her home. Her two young daughters, aged six and seven, had spent the night with their grandmother and were brought home to a scene of unimaginable horror.
When their mother didn't answer the door, one of the girls peered through a window and saw her mother covered in blood.
The subsequent investigation revealed the violent nature of Mary's death. She had been stabbed more than 30 times in her neck and upper body. There were defensive wounds, indicating she had fought for her life. The scene within the house suggested a struggle that began in the living room and ended in the bedroom where her body was discovered. Despite the violence, there were no signs of forced entry. A side door with a broken knob, which Mary had secured with a bungee cord, was undisturbed. This led investigators to believe that the killer was likely someone Mary knew, someone who was familiar with her and her home.
In the initial stages of the investigation, suspicion fell on several individuals in Mary's life. Investigators looked closely at her three ex-husbands. One was in jail at the time of the murder for an unrelated offense. Another had been involved in a physical altercation with Mary and his new wife earlier that year. Her most recent ex-husband had been seen outside her house not long before her death, though his mother provided an alibi for the night of the murder. Beyond her former spouses, investigators also considered other men who had shown a drunken interest in Mary at the bar where she worked, including some itinerant laborers who were in town that summer.
Despite the numerous potential suspects and various leads, the case grew cold. Years turned into decades with no arrests made, leaving Mary's family with unanswered questions and a sense of unresolved justice. The Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation took over the case in 1997, but the multitude of suspects and possible scenarios complicated their efforts. In more recent years, there has been a renewed push for answers. A new special agent was assigned to the case, and as recently as 2022 and 2023, search warrants for DNA and prints were served in Texas, targeting one of her ex-husbands and his wife at the time. Yet, the murder of Mary Pewitt remains officially unsolved, a lingering mystery in the heart of a small Oklahoma town.
