On the evening of May 29, 1983, a 46-year-old White male named Royal Taylor "Roy" Cumby Jr. was driving in Santa Fe, Texas. At approximately 7:20 PM, near the intersection of 4-1/2 Street and Avenue Q, he was fatally shot. A witness driving behind Cumby's vehicle saw two other men inside the car with him, one in the front passenger seat and another in the back. After the shooting, Cumby's car door was pushed open and he fell out onto the street. He got to his knees and then staggered into a nearby ditch where he died.
The two unidentified men fled the scene in Cumby's Chevrolet Monte Carlo. The vehicle was discovered later that evening, around 10:00 PM, abandoned in the nearby city of La Marque, Texas. The motive for the murder has never been determined by investigators.
Despite the passage of decades, the case remains an unsolved homicide. Investigators have interviewed numerous people over the years and re-submitted evidence for DNA analysis, but no suspects have been publicly identified or arrested in connection with the murder. The Texas Department of Public Safety and the Santa Fe Police Department continue to investigate the cold case, periodically offering rewards for information that might lead to an arrest and bring closure to the family of Royal Cumby.
