Shore: Residence -- Renwick Drive

 << Previous Post in this Series: Possible Victims

As do many serial killers, Anthony Allen Shore prowled for his victims close to his home. It is therefore important to know where Shore lived when attempting to determine which of the unsolved (or incorrectly solved) crimes he may be responsible for.

I have, for some time now, been attempting to determine all of Shore's residences since he moved back to the Houston area. (He attended to Clear Lake High School in League City for one year, then moved to California, then moved back to Houston.) I've relied on the book Strangler, public records searches, and some clever research by Victor Jackson. (Victor Jackson is married to the mother of Monalisa Espinosa, one of Shore's possible victims.)

I'll describe Shore's residences in this and subsequent posts. I'll not give sufficient information to locate the specific house or apartment, since I don't want the current residents being bothered.

6114 Renwick Drive, Houston 77081

Shore probably lived at the Renwick address beginning sometime before 16 April 1981 and ending sometime after 25 March 1983.

On or about 16 April 1981, Anthony Allen Shore was in a traffic accident. He was named as a defendant in a civil suit regarding that accident. The petition, provided below, identified Shore as living at 6114 Renwick in Houston.

The plaintiff apparently tried to collect damages prior to filing a lawsuit. The Petition wasn't filed until 24 March 1983, as shown in the second page, provided below.

In what may be only a coincidence, Shore married his first wife, Gina Lynn Worley, only one day later, on 25 March 1983. In the quote from Strangler below, author Corey Mitchell overstates his years by one.

She met Shore after Thanksgiving in 1983. 

"I was checking the mail in my mailbox and he ran down the stairs all flustered and introduced himself, saying "Hi! I'm Tony Shore! I'm the nicest guy you'll ever meet." Gina was smitten. "I thought he was charming. He is a charming guy. He was really a nice, open genuine person." 

Shore asked her out then and there. The couple spent most of their time together gearing up for the Christmas holiday. He would take Gina in his big Impala, for which he paid $100, to the upscale Galleria in Houston for some serious Christmas shopping. Gina remembered she thought his car was cute with a peace sign sticker in the back window an a rusty scraped-up bumper. 

"It had an exhaust leak," Gina remembered, "so [whenever] you drove more than ten minutes, man you were happy [when] you got there. 

"It was really neat when we met, We had almost the same kind of books. At that point in time we were reading things like Jonathan Living Seagull, those types of books. So, we really hit it off. We really got along." 

The young lovebirds wasted no time in trying the know. They were married in on March 25, 1984.

Later in his book, Mitchell provides dates that clarify Shore met Gina around Thanksgiving of 1982 and married in March 1983. Mitchell also explains that the couple moved to the Atrium Apartments near the airport soon after their marriage. Victor and I have recently figured out the specific location of that vague description. I'll be discussing the Atrium Apartments in the next post in this series.

Since Gina described Shore as running "down the stairs" while she was checking her mail, it sounds as if they were living nearby in the same apartment complex. The building at 6114 Renwick Drive is indeed a two-story apartment building. I offer an image from Google street view below.

The apartment complex is located in the west Houston area, as were most of Shore's residences. I provide a Google map view of the area below.

Strangler author Corey Mitchell was not able to pin down when Shore returned to the Houston area after living in California. In his book, he left the issue vague. "By 1983," he wrote, "Tony Shore moved back to Houston, Texas. He was twenty-one years old when he met the love of his life, an older woman named Gina Worley."

By discovering the traffic accident in which Shore was involved, Victor Jackson has placed Shore's return to Houston two years earlier than Mitchell's approximation. This means that Shore may have been dismissed as a potential culprit for one or more unsolved attacks from perhaps as early as 1980 through 1983.

Here are two images of Shore as he appeared around that time.

If you have any information about an unsolved attack against a young woman in this area during this time frame, or you have any information about Tony Shore around this time period, please contact the Houston PD or email me.

Shore: Possible Victims

 << Previous Post in this Series: Introduction

In this post, I will briefly summarize 16 cases of rape and murder that I believe occurred at the hands of Anthony Allen Shore. Of those cases, Shore confessed to murdering four of the victims and raping one of them. One other case is that of Shore's second wife. She claims that Shore nearly strangled her to death while raping her.

For this series, I will limit the discussion to attacks for the 12-year period between 26 September 1986 (when Shore murdered Laurie Trembly) and 16 January 1999 (when Shore raped Amy Lynch). I am aware of one possible attack by Shore prior to his murder of Laurie Trembly, but I am not presently at liberty to discuss that attack. I am aware of at least two attacks after the rape of Amy Shore. I will mention them later in the series. I will not, however, analyze them in detail due to insufficiency of information.

I have a database of unsolved cases of young women abducted and attacked in the Houston area for the 22-year period between 1981 (when Shore moved backed to Houston) and 2003 (when Shore was arrested for the murder of Carmen Estrada). I can attribute only a minority of those cases to Anthony Allen Shore. The victims listed in this post are a subset of all those cases I have in my database.

I will discuss the attacks in the order in which they occurred. I will reserve any effort to justify my attribution of the cases to Anthony Allen Shore until later posts in this series.

Now for the list of the definite and possible victims of Anthony Allen Shore.

26 Sep 1986: Laurie Trembly -- Shore confessed to murdering this young woman. I have described this case in substantial detail here.

26 Sep 1988: Shandra Charles and Marcell Taylor -- The sixteen-year-old girl and her three-year-old nephew were murdered by precise stab wounds to their necks in a field a mile and a half from where Shore was living. Texas executed Preston Hughes for the murders, though he was innocent. My extensive series on that case is outlined here. The petition for Habeas Corpus I prepared for Hughes is here.

02 Feb 1989: Monalisa Espinosa -- This sixteen-year-old girl went missing from 10120 Irvington Boulevard in Houston. I learned of her case only recently from Victor Jackson. Victor married Monalisa's mother, Alice, some time after the murder. Working together, Victor and I have been able to uncover additional information about Shore that is relevant to this series. Because Victor and Alice Jackson are determined that Monalisa's murder be solved, they allow me to mention their names and (eventually) share their contact information. It is their determination and involvement that has prompted me to resume blogging on a limited basis.

15 Dec 1989: Jane Doe Westheimer -- The body of this unidentified young female was discovered at 5433 Westheimer Road in Houston on 29 December 1989. I estimate the date of her murder to be two weeks prior to the discovery of her body. It's important to remember that the date of her murder is approximate.

08 Sep 1990: Stephanie Beuhler -- This eighteen-year-old female had a flat tire near the corner of Westheimer Road and Beltway 8. The police believe she was abducted when she attempted to walk the half-mile back to her home.

16 May 1992: Carmen Estrada -- Shore confessed to murdering this young woman. He was tried and convicted for her murder, and her murder only. Shore sits on death row now because of her murder. I have describe this case in substantial detail here.

19 Oct 1993: Selma Janske -- Shore confessed to raping this young woman. She survived the attack, desires to remain anonymous, and the name used herein is an alias adopted from the book Strangler. I have described this case in substantial detail here.

13 May 1994: Trellis Sykes -- This sixteen-year-old girl was abducted as she walked to school. Her body was discovered in a field near the 3900 block of Redbud in Houston. She had been beaten and strangled.

07 Aug 1994: Diana Robellar -- Shore dragged this nine-year-old girl into a van as she walked home from a nearby store. Shore raped and strangled her. He dumped her body behind a large, abandoned storage building. Shore confessed to murdering her. I have described this case in substantial detail here.

06 Jul 1995: Dana Sanchez -- Shore confessed to murdering this young, pregnant woman. I have described this case in substantial detail here.

07 Jun 1997: Erica Garcia -- The body of this fourteen-year-old girl was discovered in the vacated Alief General Hospital at 11101 Bellaire, Houston. She had been raped and strangled.

08 Dec 1998: Melissa Trotter -- This nineteen-year-old female was abducted on the date indicated. Her body was discovered in the Sam Houston National Forest 25 days later on 2 January 1999. Larry Swearingen was convicted of murdering her and sentenced to death. Because Swearingen was in jail when Melissa Trotter was killed, I have described him as The Most Innocent Man on Death Row. I presented my hypothesis that Shore killed Melissa Trotter here.

16 Jan 1999: Amy Lynch -- This young woman was Shore's second wife. He nearly choked her to death while raping her. She was waiting at the courthouse door to file divorce papers the first morning the courthouse was open after Shore's attack. Shore's attack on her is discussed in Strangler.

I will begin analyzing the attacks as a whole and individually beginning with the next post in this series.

Shore: Introduction

I am returning to blogging temporarily to present a case that Anthony Allen Shore is responsible for killing seven more young women and one young man beyond the four murders to which he has confessed. If I am correct in my assessment, then Texas has attempted to execute an innocent man four times for one of those murders, and did in fact execute an innocent man for two of those murders.

To determine whether or not Shore committed any particular murder, I relied on four criteria:

1. Was the victim the type of person that Shore would murder? 

2. Was the murder performed in a fashion consistent with Shore's other murders?

3. Was the possible point-of-first-contact between Shore and the victim near Shore's home?

4. Was the timing of the murder consistent with a random walk analysis of Shore's other murders?

I understand that even a strong match on all four criteria does not prove that Shore committed a specific murder. I note, however, that I have identified eight murders that meet three or more of the criteria. The chance that all eight are only coincidentally consistent with Shore is exceptionally small.

In other words, I believe my analysis shows that Anthony Allen Shore is responsible for three times as many murders as he has confessed to. By extension, I believe my analysis reinforces my argument that Larry Swearingen did not kill Melissa Trotter, despite Texas' repeated efforts to execute him for that murder. Similarly by extension, I believe my analysis reinforces my argument that Preston Hughes killed neither Shandra Charles nor Marcell Taylor, despite the fact that Texas has already executed him for those murders.

I will present my analysis in this series, beginning with my next post in which I will identify the other victims of Anthony Allen Shore.

Next  Post in  this Series:  Possible Victims   >>

The Skeptical Juror and The Trial of Bryon Case

I have converted The Skeptical Juror and The Trial of Byron Case to PDF format and I have placed it among my Skeptical Juror Docs. I make this PDF version of the book public and free.

The Skeptical Juror and The Trial of Byron Case

Mother's Day 2013

Last year was a difficult year, for many reasons. One of the reasons is that my mother died. She died before Mother's Day 2012, so this will be the second that I cannot wish her a happy Mother's Day.

Even when my mother was alive, Mother's Day meant something different to me than most people. I've noticed that most (not all, but most) of the people who fight stubbornly to free loved ones are mothers. On Mother's Day, therefore, I find myself thinking of those who have lost children for crimes they did not commit.

It seems inappropriate to wish them a happy Mother's Day as their children languish in prison, or lie in a grave, for crimes they did not commit. Furthermore, it seems insensitive to merely ignore them for fear of not having the right words. I therefore want to take this opportunity to offer my best wishes to some of those mothers, to those I have worked with and continue to work with.

I offer my best wishes to Evelyn Case. Her son Byron is serving two life sentences without possibility of parole for a murder he did not commit. Byron's petition to Governor Nixon for an absolute pardon is here. My two letters to Governor Nixon in support of that petition are here and here. My book on the case is here. The Kindle version, which I shall soon make free, is here.

I offer my best wishes to Pat Ledford. Her son Michael is serving 50 years without the possibility of parole for a murder he did not commit. Michael's petition to Governor McDonnell, which I prepared with the help of his mother, is here.

I offer my best wishes to Brenda Johnson. Her son Preston Hughes III was executed for a crime he did not commit. Preston's application for Writ of Habeas Corpus, which I prepared, is here.

I also offer my best wishes to Alice Jackson. Her teenage daughter, Monalisa Espinosa, was murdered. The case remains unsolved. I have recently been contacted by Victor Jackson. Victor believes that his step-daughter was murdered by Anthony Allen Shore. Victor and I have quickly built a working relationship that has led to some new discoveries in the case of Anthony Allen Shore. Because of Victor, I have decided to resume blogging on a limited basis.

On this Mother's Day, 2013, I offer my best wishes to Evelyn Case, Pat Ledford, Brenda Johnson, and Alice Jackson.