OK OK - Patricia Palmer, 19, Tulsa, 17 November 1981

http://www.tulsapeople.com/Tulsa-People/October-2010/Notorious-Tulsa-cold-case-investigations/

Patricia Palmer was 19 in 1981, a newlywed hoping to earn enough money from the sale of her wedding dress to help with a down payment for a house. On Nov. 15, 1981, she placed an ad in the Tulsa World. Two days later, a man called the number listed, her mother’s number, to answer that ad. The prospective buyer arranged to meet Palmer at her mother’s home at 4127 S. Sandusky Ave. on Nov. 17, 1981, to view the dress. Later that afternoon, when Palmer’s mother called and her daughter did not answer the phone, a neighbor was contacted and found the new bride dead. She had been sexually assaulted, strangled and drowned in the bathtub. DNA had been collected in the case, according to news reports.

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https://www.tulsapolice.org/cot/tpdunsolvedcrimes/CaseDetails.aspx?1=287

A subject was observed standing on the front porch with the victim showing the dress. The subject was described as a white male 5'10"-6'00" tall, 180-190 pounds. Subject's vehicle parked in the driveway was a black over dark blue 1972-74 Chevrolet Impala. The vehicle had an Oklahoma license plate. The vehicle was very clean, possible recently repainted. Chrome dealer decal on left side of the bottom of the trunk lid. The vehicle may have had a black CB antenna mounted in the center of the trunk lid, or a fully extended radio antenna that was bent back over the top of the vehicle.

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http://www.newson6.com/story/7662286/police-ask-for-help-in-26-year-old-murder-case

Tulsa's cold case homicide squad is asking for help in a 1981 murder that still haunts them to this day. Patricia Palmer was the victim, a newlywed who put an ad in the paper to sell her wedding dress. Police say the man who showed up to look at it strangled her to death...

The semen from the scene was destroyed because at that time, samples were kept in test tubes. However, police do have DNA from gum found in the bathtub that could still help solve this case.

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I wonder if the gum was ever tested? This happened less than a mile from me. Such a sad case....

Tulsa woman murdered while selling wedding dress

Posted: 5:32 PM, Apr 27, 2018
Updated: 6:43 PM, Apr 27, 2018
By: Ashley Holt

TULSA -- It's a cold case so old police worry all of the important characters could be dead.

"Patricia Denise Palmer, 19, was found at 12:45 p.m.," a mother read the newspaper article following her daughter's murder.

Patricia, known to her family as Denise, had turned to her mother Pat just days before her death to say how perfect life was.

'Life is almost too perfect,' she told her mother Pat Carlile.

Denise had no idea the perfection she felt would turn into a less than perfect ending.

“She’d advertised in the newspaper that she was wanting to sell her wedding gown, wanted to get some money," said a retired doctor who worked the case John Watson.

She was a newlywed married to her husband Randy for only six months.

“When she put the ad in the paper we had not gotten any calls from it until that day," said her mother Pat.

The ad was buried in a Sunday edition of the "Tulsa World."

“He had a real nice voice and yet there was just something that - you know when you’re having a wedding you’re excited, and you’re pumped up and all that - he didn’t have that kind of voice.”

A man who police later got a sketch of told Pat he wanted the dress for his daughter.

“I just had an uneasy feeling, as soon as I hung up the phone I had a real uneasy feeling about him," she said.

She called Denise and told her to take a friend.

"She did try to take someone with her and no one could go with her."

At least hang the dress in the foyer Pat told her, so he doesn't have to come inside.

“I knew what time she’d be home and I called, I go to a phone -- we didn’t have cell phones -- and I would go to a phone and call, and no answer.”

Something was off.

“She let him in and he strangled her and raped her," Watson said.

While the phone rang in their home the unthinkable must've happened.

“The assault happened in one room, she was placed in a bathtub. The water was still running," said Tulsa Cold Case Detective Eddie Majors who's now on the case.

Neighbors who found her told Pat and her husband Van to come home.

Van remembers the entire block was full of people, police and an ambulance he said was noticeably not in any hurry to get to the hospital.

“That man killed Denise is what she said," Remembers Denise's stepfather Van Carlile.

Men working in the neighborhood saw "that man."

“They made note of a car that was in the driveway that they liked. It was a 73/74 Chevy Impala, blue in color, had a CB Antenna on the trunk," said Detective Majors.

And probably the most notable thing, a mark on his face.

“Someone’s got to know this person.”

More story at the link

Seemed like they got such a good description of the vehicle and still could find him

Bumping

I posted this on Reddit but i think it’s possible it was Elliott Higgins who killed Patricia ‘We were duped by a master manipulator and liar’: Family, friends of Elliott Higgins speak on man accused in Alabama sex crimes