TX TX - Caroline Harte, 14, Mustang Island, 24 Jul 1969

portia311

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http://www.johndouglasmindhunter.com/forums/viewtopic.php?p=58154

Updated: 07/24/2009 08:03:08 AM PDT



PORT ARANSAS, Texas — Hours after two 14-year-old girls closed the cover on a novel they were reading during a sleepover, slipped into twin beds and turned off the lights, one girl's cry sent the other to wake her sleeping parents.



The events of that night, July 24, 1969, on Mustang Island have baffled investigators for 40 years. One girl died, and it so haunted her friend that it may have led her to kill herself decades later.



Genevieve Duncan met her daughter May on the stairs of the two-story beach house. May said the cry came from her friend, Caroline Harte. The mother heard a door slam, and found a terrifying sight downstairs: Caroline was gasping and bleeding on the bed, suffering from a stab wound to the heart. By the time they dressed to take her to a hospital, Caroline was dead.



The case is the oldest unsolved slaying in Nueces County, which includes Corpus Christi along the Texas Gulf Coast. The knife was never found. No motive was clear and no arrests were ever made.



Caroline's father, then-publisher of the San Antonio Express and Evening News, had an unsettling premonition after his brother, Edward, then publisher of the Corpus Christi Caller-Times, called to relay the news. "Sometimes, as we walked around in shock, I remember thinking to myself: This is a crime that will never be solved," said Houston Harte, whose father was a founder of Harte-Hanks Newspapers Inc.



"And I was right about that."



===========================================
 
Thank you. I have been looking for info on this case for quite some time. I first came across her name when I was reading an old news paper my grandfather saved, from July 25, 1969. I was reading about the astronauts coming home from the moon. Well off to the side I see a photo of a beautiful girl, then read about her murder. It saddened me very deeply. She was only 14 years old. So I looked up the case and everything I see is the same. So I wanted to post her photo, as I can not find any more of her, so I can put a face to this young girl. I dont want her to he just some name on a page, so to speak.. mt problem... im mobile. I don't have a computer. How can this be done?
 
Welcome to WS Portia!!!!! :rocker:

Copyright infringement laws require that we reproduce no more than 10% of any news article, and then provide a link to the source.

if you look on the bottom right corner of your original post, you will see an edit button. Would you edit the post down to the 10% you want to highlight please?

Thank you!
 
Welcome to WS, by the way, portia311. I'm surprised I had never heard about the case - I lived in San Antonio for eight years and thought I pretty well knew the mysteries of that part of the world.

Not a mobile person so I'm not sure how one would go about it. I'll look for more stuff on the case on my PC and if I find anything I'll post links.
 
A couple of articles from 1969-70 about the case can be found here.
 
Thank you all very much! I'll try to downsize my first post. I'm from south Texas so this hits very close to home for me. I have two daughters so it disturbs me to see things like this.
 
Thank you for bringing the focus back to Caroline, Portia!
 
You're welcome. Unfortunately, though, they're the only ones I can find - three articles from 1969 and one from 1970.
Well that's more than I could find! Lol. Awesome work. I can't find a way to upload Caroline's photo from my phone.. so ill post her picture as my default so she has a face :)
 
50 years ago...

Caroline Louise Harte
Birth 1954
Death 23 July 1969 (aged 14–15)
Mustang Beach, Nueces County, Texas, USA
Burial
Sunset Memorial Park
San Antonio, Bexar County, Texas, USA
Plot Section 15 (Monuments)
 
The more I read about this case, the stranger it seems. Here's a link to an article in the Corpus Christi Caller-Times from the day after

24 Jul 1969, Page 1 - The Corpus Christi Caller-Times at Newspapers.com

The sequence of events seems odd. The father of Caroline's friend, at whose house she was visiting, went downstairs first then said he didn't see anything. He went back upstairs and got back into bed. Then the mother got up and went downstairs to check the girls and saw Caroline was wounded, with blood on her clothing. The father says he didn't turn on the light in the room, but the mother did when she went downstairs. It was when the mother was going downstairs that May, Caroline's friend came up the stairs and met her mother. Why didn't the daughter go upstairs when the father did? She said she was awakened by Caroline screaming and that she was passed out or fainted. Why didn't she tell her father that when he went downstairs first?

In spite of it all, they didn't call for help for a while. The mother finally called a doctor, who was not available. The answering service told her to call the local hospital, who told her to wrap a blanket around the girl and bring her in. They went back downstairs (Caroline had allegedly been left alone at the time) to wrap a blanket around her. When they turned her over they saw she was wounded. At that point they went back upstairs again and called the police, who called an ambulance. They returned downstairs to Caroline again and found she had died. How long did all this take? In the midst of all that, they all got dressed.

The father of Caroline's friend is the one who heard the screen door slam. He said he went to check it because he was concerned that someone was coming in to steal bathing suits again. He's the one who reported the girls bathing suits had been stolen from an outside clothesline a couple of days before.

Then the medical examiner decides not to do an autopsy because he said it was obvious how she died. He didn't do a test for rape because he said it didn't look like she had been sexually assaulted. Also strange. Police dusted the screen door for fingerprints and allegedly found none.

JMO, its possible the killer was someone in the family or known to them.

ETA: This later article says an autopsy was conducted by another ME, from Bexar County, at the behest of the state police officials. The ME who did the autopsy said Caroline was stabbed with a single-edge, thin instrument similar to a knife, possibly a long pocket knife. The wound was 3 1/2 inches deep. The report said it was erroneous that she was stabbed with some type of blunt instrument. Some slight bruises were also found on her left thigh.

6 Aug 1969, Page 16 - The Waco News-Tribune at Newspapers.com

If she was stabbed in the chest, why was she found laying face down on the bed?

The Duncan family said the incident ocurred at 2:30 am, but the hospital says they weren't contacted until 3:30 am.
 
Last edited:

Caroline Louise Harte, age 14
Murdered 24 July 1969

March 11th, 2019
Mysterious Slaying of an Heiress: The Story Of Caroline Harte

In the summer of 1969, Caroline Louise Harte joined her friend May’s family at their summer home near the beaches of Port Aransas. Caroline and May enjoyed themselves the five days they spent together doing all the things that 14-year-olds do on a beach vacation. In the early morning hours of July 25th, however, the day Caroline was to return home to her family, an unthinkable and gruesome thing occurred: Caroline was murdered while she slept, just feet from where her friend, May, was sleeping...

LINK:

gone cold podcast - texas true crime – Mysterious Slaying of an Heiress: The Story Of Caroline Harte – 24:54
 

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