Found Deceased TX - Carolyn Riggins, 69, missing after winning bingo jackpot, Watauga, 11 Jul 2020

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Officials are offering up to $1,000 for information related to Riggins' whereabouts.

Woman missing since July was last seen at Watauga Road Bingo Hall, Fort Worth police say

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I can't help but think someone must have followed her out of the bingo hall. Everyone knew she'd won the jackpot. Unfortunately it wouldn't have taken much to follow her to an isolated stop sign/area then threaten her with a weapon. I pray they find her soon. This family must be out of their wits waiting on news. I wonder if LE watched the cams from the moment she won until she a few minutes after she left? Seems it might provide them with someone who appeared to be waiting/following her.
 
tarabull said:
Bingo to Denton via I35 FWIW...includes a bridge over Lewisville Lake:

https://goo.gl/maps/K9St3cGF37mp1Bsj8‬‏‏
Click to expand...
I know it’s a bit confusing, but there are actually two I-35 highways in the DFW Metroplex. I-35 splits into an “East” and a “West” south of DFW near Waco. I-35 East takes you north through downtown Dallas and eventually into Denton. That is the highway which crosses over Lake Lewisville. I-35 West, the highway Ms. Riggins would have taken from Watauga to Denton, passes through downtown Fort Worth and eventually arrives in Denton as well. The city of Denton is where the two separate I-35s merge back into one highway again. I-35 West doesn’t cross Lake Lewisville or any other major bodies of water.

Just wanted to clarify there, as there really aren’t any significant bodies of water Ms. Riggins would have crossed had she been driving on I-35 W from Watauga to Denton. I think one of two situations occurred: either a) that wasn’t her driving her car as it was captured on camera in Denton, and she met with foul play, or b) she became disoriented and drove around confused for hours before falling victim to accident in an obscured location somewhere.

If it’s the foul play scenario, it’s likely the perpetrator(s) drove her car across state lines to either a dump site or perhaps even where they lived. If it’s the accident scenario, it certainly didn’t happen on I-35, because there is literally no way a wrecked car could remain undiscovered that long on that stretch of highway. Some Interstate highways in the US do have stretches where they become very narrow and even remote, surrounded by woods, desert, water, and/or wildnerness. In those places it might be rather easy for a car to veer off into nature and go undetected. But I-35 is a multi-lane highway in both directions and is heavily-traveled. If that was in fact her driving her car on I-35 at 5:30 in the morning, she had to have exited somewhere north of Denton and then crashed or run off the road in the woods or into a small stream/ravine out of the sight of the highway and other major roads.
 
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Carolyn's family has increased the reward in their efforts to get information about Ms. Riggins. They're asking for volunteers to help with weekend searches. I pray they can find her soon.

FindingCarolyn
Snipped
We need YOUR help! Ask your friends to come out on August 29th, 2020, at 9:00 a.m. to help us have the most comprehensive search for findingCarolyn!
We will meet at the Watauga Rd. Bingo Hall parking lot.

118320036_135683588221555_5869358742460673811_o.jpg
 
mysteryfan96 said:
I have no idea where she lives or which direction she would have needed to travel from the bingo hall to get there, but I am from the DFW Metroplex and can shine a little light on that area as well as what it would have taken for her to get to that license plate reader on I-35 in Denton.

Watauga is a small and very non-descript middle class suburb in the western part of the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex, just east/northeast of Fort Worth. It’s not a bad town by any means, but there is nothing noteworthy about it whatsoever. So unless you live there or have friends/relatives there, you would never have a reason to go there or even remember that it exists, actually. I don’t mean that to be critical or harsh in any way, and there are certainly plenty of wonderful people who live and work there. It just isn’t noted for anything good OR bad. It’s not a high crime city at all, but it wouldn’t rank among DFW’s safest either. So while it doesn’t have any infamously rough parts you need to avoid, it’s like most cities in America where someone out at night, especially an older woman, would need to keep aware of her surroundings.

As far as Interstate 35, it is only a few miles west of Watauga. It runs north and south, with it running through downtown Fort Worth just south of Watauga and then up through a few smaller cities like Blue Mound and Justin before coming into the city of Denton (home to the University of North Texas). If you were to continue north on I-35 through Denton, you would arrive at the Texas-Oklahoma border in around 30-40 minutes, with not a whole heck of a lot in between Denton and Oklahoma.

The sighting of her car on I-35 headed toward Oklahoma at 5:30 am after she just won some sort of cash jackpot at bingo really does not bode well, I’m afraid. I can’t see any reason why an almost 70 year old woman would stay out all night and then drive that far away from her home (going in the wrong direction from her home city) at 5:30 am. However, I guess the dementia angle does offer some hope. It’s possible she got confused and turned around and then drove in the wrong direction for a long time. But that’s still a lot of hours for her to be unaccounted for between when she left the bingo hall and when her car was spotted 30 minutes away in Denton. Where did she go for all of those hours? It would seem likely if she were driving for all of those hours that her car would have run out of gas. Did she stop off and fill up somewhere?

It just doesn’t seem like she would drive herself that far away from home in the overnight hours, and sadly it seems her family agrees. Plus you would think that by now either she or her vehicle would have been located had she just wandered away or gotten into an accident somewhere (even a remote location). There just aren’t any major rivers or bridges or thick woods anywhere between Denton and Oklahoma where her car could have ended up. There is the Red River on the Texas-Oklahoma border, but I’ve driven over that many times and, unlike with other river crossings in the US, that just isn’t a very likely spot for a car to plunge into the river. It would take a lot more than a simple swerving out of your lane to make it from the highway into the river there.

Sadly I think the likelier scenario is that she was targeted and followed by a very bad person (or people) who saw an elderly woman flush with cash. It could have even been someone who showed up at that bingo hall that night for the specific purpose of robbing whatever individual won big.
Click to expand...

GREAT description of the area! I'm also from the area (Euless here). I hadn't even heard of this case until today and that surprised me! I'm usually pretty aware of missing cases in the area.
 
Snoopster said:
So, you're Carolyn and you've just won big. What do you do? Do you head home so you can call your family and friends in excitement? Do you think, 'heck, I should go have a drink at a bar and celebrate'?

She didn't have her phone with her...so she couldn't call anyone.

Here is the location of the bingo hall (nothing notable as it is basic city/suburb kind of setting with no major water around and very flat):

Google Maps

Does anyone know where she lived? What direction she may have headed?
Click to expand...

This article lists a different address than the bingo hall address. I'm only assuming it might be a living address. It appears to be an apartment complex.
edited to add: 3.6 miles from this address to the bingo hall address
https://www.star-telegram.com/news/local/fort-worth/article244374337.html
 
As someone who plays bingo at a large bingo hall I can help with how the winnings are paid out. When you go to the bingo hall, depending on the time, you buy a pack that contains all of the games that will be played that night. Usually if you come early the sell ‘early bird’ games individually that pay out smaller amounts than the later games. Also throughout the night they will add in games that are not in the packs and you can also buy extra sheets for the games in your pack before the games begin. So it’s not uncommon for someone to get lucky and win several games in a night. Depending on how early you get there and if you play early birds you can play anywhere from 25-50 games a night maybe more depending on how many people are there.

As the night progresses the big winning games are played toward the end of the night. Then the final game is usually a ‘jackpot’ game. Believe it or not the ‘buy in’ of the nightly pack is not that much money compared to what you can win. It’s the extra games and extra sheets that can run up the money. I’ve played the large and smaller bingo halls. Some nights I’ve won several games and some nights nothing. So she could have easily walked out of there with a nice pile if she’d won a couple games. We always worry about being followed both at the casino and bingo hall. At a casino unless someone is right beside you it is rare that someone even knows you won anything but at a bingo game everyone knows who won and how much and it is always cash (at least at the places where I have played).

At most places they will have security staff that will walk you to your car if you ask...but most people are riding that high of winning and rarely think about someone robbing them in the parking lot and it happens quite a bit. Just type in ‘robbed at bingo hall’ in google and you will see what I mean.
 
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