TC was a young black guy, but still a set of eyes so I wasn't alone. The cooks were two little old ladies, the hostess was about my age, so we were a harmless group. However the cook that worked like two nights a week to relieve the old ladies was a pervert, just harmless vulgararity is like to think... Don't think he was around in the 80s nor fit the right age bracket to have been a suspect. I don't know if she made it out the parking lot, she obviously did, but where she was actually murdered, no clue where to even start speculation on that. I'm not opposed to it being a cop, a mechanic next door, a trucker, a employee at the Hitching post in 1980, a correctional officer, a inmate recently released or just some weirdo passing through. There are so many characters that frequent that place because its on the way out of or into town. The parking lot for truckers is the size of a Wal-Mart parking lot, so we are talking 50 truckers a night just parked... Maybe 15 correctional officers in there for coffee before their shift at 4 a.m. police officers patrolling for lot lizards or just mingling with each other... That poor girl could've been approached by someone that's from Canada for all we know.
Sorry, that came out the wrong way. Of course she made it out of the parking lot. I was making reference to your statement about her being picked up at the hitching post or atleast that's what I was trying to do. My mistake.
I'm sure by the time you worked there things had changed a lot and I don't know about 1980, but I do know that at one time prisons used what was known as building tenders and I think Texas was one of the last states to use them. Building tenders are nothing more than inmates that act as guards and in the past they were granted some pretty big privileges. I don't know if this would involve ever letting them leave the prison grounds or not. If so they probably would have just posed as guards which is basically what they were.
Come to think of it I remember reading about a suspect in this case, Henry Lucas,(who I'm kinda doubtful about) how LE let him roam freely around the jailhouse and would actually take him out to eat at restaurants.
I was just wondering about some of these prison guards and who all they were. Ellis prison has a colorful past to say the least.