He’d Been Hiding in Plain Sight for DECADES. Then Something Unexpected Happened…

Two sisters were found dead in their home, and police quickly ended up with a long list of suspects, each of them carrying secrets of their own. And each of them looking like someone who could have been the killer. But with almost no real evidence to work with, the investigation stalled for three decades. It wasn’t until all those years later that one unexpected phone call finally brought out the truth.

 And even the detectives were stunned by it. Wylene Kennedy was born on January 22nd, 1951 in Texas. She grew up in a big family and was the oldest of three children. From an early age, she stood out for her creativity and love for anything artistic. So, after high school, Wylene wanted to build a career in that world.

 She worked in interior design, focusing on glasswork, and also opened her own little vintage clothing shop. It barely brought in enough money to live on. But for Wylene, doing something she genuinely cared about mattered a lot more. She lived in a small house not far from the store, on the same street as her father’s home. In March of 1984, when Wylene was 33, her younger sister Lilly moved in with her for a while.

 She had recently lost her job and split from her husband, so she needed somewhere to stay until she got back on her feet. Wylene was more than happy to help. The two sisters were very close and spent a lot of their free time together. They went roller skating, watched local bands, and were deeply involved in the creative scene in their neighborhood.

 On March 5th, Wylene was supposed to drive her father to the hospital. He had heart problems and needed to see his doctor. But when the time came, she never showed up, which immediately struck him as strange. Since Wylene lived on the same street, her father decided to walk over to her house and make sure everything was all right. When he got there, he saw that his daughter’s car was still parked outside.

Then, he noticed the front door was standing open and walked closer. The moment he looked inside, he saw Wylene lying on the floor near the doorway, covered in blood. A few feet away was Lilly. And it looks like both of them were dead. Their father ran straight to the neighbors to call for help. But by the time paramedics got there, it was already too late.

 Both women were dead, and the police took over the scene. Detectives immediately noticed that the sisters had been killed in very different ways. Part of Wylene’s clothing was missing, which pointed to a possible sexual assault. Her body was covered in bruises and stab wounds, and there was also a gunshot wound to her left arm.

 They also found a piece of cloth stuffed in her mouth. All of that suggested that the killer had spent quite a long time brutalizing her. But in Lilly’s case, it was different. Aside from a single gunshot wound, there was no other injuries on her body, and all of her clothes were still in place. Based on that, detectives quickly came to believe Wylene had been the real target.

 More than anything, the sheer brutality of what had been done to her suggested the killer had a personal motive, making the idea of a random attack seem unlikely. Even so, police weren’t ready to completely rule that out just yet. Bloody shoe prints had been left all through the house, and they appeared to belong to the killer.

 It looked as though, after the murders, he had walked through the home searching for something. The contents of Lilly’s purse had been dumped out onto the floor, and her wallet was missing. At the same time, several hundred dollars were sitting out in plain sight in Wylene’s room, but the killer had left them untouched. The same went for the sisters’ jewelry and other valuables.

None of it had been taken. Another important detail was that there were no signs of forced entry on any of the doors. That suggested that the women may have known the killer and let him into the house willingly. The neighborhood where Wylene and Lilly lived wasn’t considered the safest when it came to theft, but murders there were extremely rare.

 Taken together with everything else at the scene, that pushed detectives even further toward one conclusion. They weren’t dealing with some random burglar who ended up killing the sisters. They were dealing with someone who had come there intending to kill Wylene from the start. Not long after that, police found another strange piece of evidence.

 As part of their routine, they searched not just the crime scene itself, but the surrounding streets, too. A few hundred yards from the sisters’ house, they spotted one of Wylene’s couch cushions lying on the ground, covered in blood. And on the ground right next to it were the same shoe prints they’d seen inside the house.

 Detectives couldn’t understand why someone who had just committed a double murder would carry a blood-stained couch cushion out of the house instead of taking anything valuable, only to dump it a few minutes later. Once police finished processing the crime scene, they started going door-to-door and questioning neighbors. One of them said Lilly had stopped by her place the night before, around 11:00 p.m.

 She told her she had hurt her knee and asked for an elastic bandage. According to the neighbor, Lilly seemed calm and nothing about her behavior raised any red flags. Another neighbor said she’d heard several loud bangs that morning, around 6:00 a.m. She couldn’t say for certain that they were gunshots, but she said that’s what they sounded like.

 So now, detectives had a rough time frame for when it happened. But what came next was far more interesting. One of Wylene’s closest neighbors said that a little after 6:00 a.m., he saw a man come running out of her house. He looked out of breath, and in his hands, he was carrying a bedsheet stuffed with all kinds of things. The neighbor thought it looked strange, so he walked up to him and asked what was going on.

Instead of answering, the man fired back with a question of his own. “Do I look suspicious?” The neighbor didn’t hesitate. He told him he looked like a burglar who had just carried a bunch of stuff out of someone else’s house. But the man claimed that wasn’t what was happening at all.

 He said he had just got into a fight with his girlfriend, and she had kicked him out of the house, so he had to quickly gather his things and leave. The neighbor found that explanation believable, and the man disappeared from sight. Now that detectives understood this witness had most likely seen the killer, they immediately brought in a police sketch artist who worked up a composite of the suspect.

 He was described as a white man around 5’9″, weighing about 155 lb with dark hair. Police sent that sketch out to local newspapers, and tips started pouring in. People in the area were shocked by what had happened, and everyone wanted the killer caught as quickly as possible. Before long, detectives zeroed in on one suspect lead that had come in by phone.

 One caller said the sketch looked a lot like a local dealer. Police quickly learned that the man lived in not far from the crime scene, right in the direction of the spot where the couch cushion had been found. Detectives went to his house, and before they even had a chance to knock, something on the property caught their attention.

 There were shoe prints in the dirt, and the tread pattern looked very similar to the blood print left inside the victim’s home. Then, the officers knocked and started questioning the man about what had happened. He insisted he had nothing to do with the murders and claimed that at 6:00 a.m., he had been asleep at home, though no one could confirm that.

 The suspect was also visibly nervous. But when police asked for permission to search his home without a warrant, he agreed and let them in. That turned out to be a mistake on his part, because the officers immediately found a sizeable stash of drugs. But that was only the beginning. He also had a large knife and a gun in the house.

The man was arrested, and those items were sent to experts for analysis. He kept insisting that he hadn’t killed anyone. According to him, the knife and gun were for self-defense, since he was involved in illegal and dangerous activity. Detectives, however, believed he could very well be the killer.

 But they ran into several problems almost right away. The suspect passed a polygraph examination, and Wylene’s neighbor, who had seen the killer’s face, could not identify him in a lineup that included the suspect and several other men. Finally, the tread pattern on his boots turned out to be different from the prints left at the murder scene, and that was what ultimately made detectives seriously doubt his involvement.

 So, they stopped treating him as a suspect in the crime, and the investigation moved on to other leads. By then, the medical examiners had finished their reports, and detectives got confirmation of what they had already suspected. The experts determined that Wylene had been killed by a single gunshot to the head at almost point-blank range, and she had no other injuries.

Wylene, on the other hand, had been subjected to prolonged abuse. The examiners also confirmed that the killer had sexually assaulted her and collected biological material from her body, but at that time, DNA testing was not yet being used, so that evidence couldn’t help investigators. Still, the medical report confirmed that Wylene was likely the main target.

 So, police focused on looking into the people around her. From her relatives and friends, they learned that she had a troubled ex named Jack. Just a few days before her death, Wylene had said she was genuinely afraid he might do something to her, but she refused to go into detail. She explained that if her loved ones knew everything, Jack might go after them, too.

Digging deeper, detectives found a message from Jack on Wylene’s answering machine. In it, he said he was coming to get the money she owed him. Police started considering the possibility that Jack had come to Wylene’s house to collect the debt, and that an argument between them had spiraled into murder. They brought him in for questioning, and the moment detectives saw him, one thing stood out right away.

Jack looked incredibly similar to the composite sketch. He insisted he hadn’t killed anyone and said the message on the answering machine had been left in the heat of the moment. As for an alibi, Jack claimed he had been asleep at home, but no one could confirm that. Police brought back the neighbor who had seen the killer, but once again, he couldn’t identify the suspect.

 That cast serious doubt on Jack’s possible involvement, and detectives had to turn their attention to other leads. From the victims’ relatives, detectives learned that Lily had a former husband, and they had divorced just a few days before the murder. She had told family members that he was threatening her, and that was one of the reasons she decided to move in with her sister.

Lily was simply afraid to live alone. Even so, he was crossed off the suspect list before he had a chance to say much in his own defense. First, he looked nothing like the composite sketch of the killer, and second, he showed up at the station on crutches. It turned out that just a few weeks before the murders, he had undergone major spinal surgery and still hadn’t recovered.

 Doctors confirmed that in that condition, he physically wouldn’t have been able to kill anyone, so police stopped considering him a suspect. Soon after that, detectives learned that not long before the murders, someone had fired three shots into Wylene’s house. One of the neighbors said he had seen a pickup truck slowly driving up and down their street several times.

It all happened in the middle of the night, and the next morning, Wylene told him that someone had shot at her house. When the neighbor mentioned the suspicious pickup, Wylene said it might belong to someone her younger sister knew, a man who had a grudge against her. She added that this person had even threatened to kill their father as revenge against Lily.

Even so, police never managed to identify the driver of the truck, and none of the victims’ relatives knew who that man could have been. Another lead came from one of Wylene’s friends, and detectives learned something interesting. She said Wylene’s ex used drugs, and that she would sometimes hide them from him.

 Once, she told her friend that she had hidden several baggies inside a couch cushion so he wouldn’t find them. And it worked. Detectives immediately remembered that the killer had, for some reason, carried a couch cushion out of the house. They went back to the evidence room and cut it open, and inside, they really did find several baggies of At that point, police started wondering whether the whole thing could have been drug-related.

Maybe the victims’ ex had come to the house to demand the drugs back, or maybe he tried to take them by force and ended up killing both sisters. But that line of investigation went nowhere. Detectives never managed to prove the ex had anything to do with it. It was their last major lead, and after that, the case saw almost no real movement at all.

At that point, the investigation had basically stalled. Wylene and Lily’s mother called the detectives almost every day, hoping they had found some new piece of information. But over time, she began to lose hope that the case would ever be solved. She also regularly contacted local newspapers, asking them to keep the case in the public eye.

By the end of 1984, a reward of $1,000 had been offered for information, and later, that amount grew to more than 11,000. But even with that, police still didn’t receive any worthwhile leads. From that point on, the investigation was effectively at a standstill for years. The victims’ relatives kept reaching out to detectives, but time after time, they got the same answer.

 There had been no progress. That went on for 25 years, until 2009, when the Houston Police Department created a cold case unit. One of the first cases they reopened was the murder of Wylene and Lily. Detectives reviewed all the existing evidence and discovered that the biological sample taken from Wylene’s body after the assault was still being held in storage.

They sent it to the lab, and experts were able to extract the killer’s DNA profile. But there was an immediate problem. The man’s DNA was not in the FBI database. Investigators compared the sample to DNA from the old suspects, but that led nowhere. And once again, the case hit a wall. That went on for another five years, until detectives got a pretty unexpected call.

By that point, the Wylene and Lily case was basically collecting dust in the back of a drawer, and no one was actively working it. But then, an attorney from Indiana, nearly 1,300 miles from Houston, reached out to the cold case unit. The lawyer said his client was facing prison time for some unrelated offense, but claimed to have important information about the murders of Wylene and Lily.

The defendant was willing to give up the killer’s name in exchange for a reduced sentence, and detectives immediately flew out to Indianapolis. The informant told them the murders had been committed by a man named Edmund Deegan. Detectives instantly recognized the name. They had already seen it in the case file.

 Edmund sold vintage clothing, and Wylene regularly bought items from him for her shop. Back in 1984, just days after the murders, police had spoken to him while interviewing people who knew the victims, but at that time, they hadn’t considered him a suspect at all because nothing pointed in that direction. According to the informant, he had lived in Houston in 1984 and knew Edmund well.

On the day of the murders, Edmund showed up at his house without warning, clearly not in the best state. He pulled a bedsheet full of various items out of his car, then went inside and started taking apart his gun. When the informant asked what was going on, Edmund began explaining in fragments. He said something like, “There were two sisters.

 It didn’t go the way it was supposed to. I had to kill them. I never thought killing someone would be that hard.” After that, Edmund built a fire in the backyard and started throwing things from the sheet into it. There was a woman’s purse, a wallet, and a large knife. Once he finished burning the evidence, he dug a hole and buried whatever was left.

 The informant tried to get more details out of him, but Edmund stopped answering his questions. Detectives were interested in the story because the informant gave a lot of very specific details. At the same time, they couldn’t rule out the possibility that he had simply studied the case through old news coverage and made the whole thing up to get a deal.

Police started digging into Edmund and found that he had been arrested several times for minor offenses, but all of that had happened before Texas began collecting DNA samples. Because of that, he wasn’t in the FBI database. Still, they found an old police photo of him, and he really did look a lot like the composite sketch of the suspect.

On top of that, detectives spoke with the victim’s niece, and she remembered Edmund. She said that one time, Wylene had taken her along when she went to buy clothes from him. Afterward, Wylene said Edmund seemed very strange, and that she felt uneasy about going to see him alone. Even with all that, detectives still needed actual evidence tying him to the murders.

 They got a warrant to search the house where the informant had once lived, hoping to find whatever was left of the knife and gun parts Edmund had supposedly buried in the yard. But that search led nowhere. So, detectives moved on to plan B and decided they needed a DNA sample from Edmund to compare with the killer’s profile. The reason they hadn’t done that right away was simple.

 Without real evidence, they couldn’t just arrest him, and the lab could take weeks to process the results. In that time, Edmund could easily disappear and go on the run. Still, they didn’t have much choice left, so police went to talk to him. By then, 57-year-old Edmund was still living in the same house he’d lived in his whole life, not far from Wylene’s street.

He was divorced, working odd jobs, and despite a long criminal history in the past, he had stayed out of trouble in recent years. When detectives brought him in for questioning, the man admitted that he really had known Wylene, but he denied having anything to do with her murder. Edmund insisted he had never killed anyone, and he also said he had no reason to wish her harm.

On top of that, he claimed there had never been any kind of sexual relationship between him and Wylene. And that immediately became a key point for detectives because the killer’s semen had been found on her body. After that, investigators asked him to provide a DNA sample, but they deliberately didn’t tell him that they already had the killer’s biological evidence.

Edmund agreed, and his DNA was sent straight to the lab. Two weeks later, the results came back. It was a match. Edmund’s DNA fully matched the semen recovered from Wylene’s body. So, 30 years after the murders, police finally had their man, and he was arrested. But almost immediately, detectives and prosecutors ran into a frustrating problem.

They had no evidence tying Edmund to Lilly’s murder, so he was charged only with the killing of Wylene. As absurd as that sounds, the law didn’t allow them to prosecute him for both murders. But that still wasn’t the end of the problem. Finding Edmund’s semen on Wylene’s body clearly proved the sexual assault, yet there still weren’t any direct pieces of evidence linking him to Wylene’s murder itself.

Edmund refused to confess, so in 2017, the prosecutor decided to offer him a deal. If he admitted to killing Wylene, he would get a lesser murder charge, and the sexual assault and robbery charges would be dropped. Another problem was that the sentence had to be handed down under the laws that were in place at the time of the murders.

 And back then, Texas had a rule that allowed inmates to get out much earlier than the full term of their sentence if they showed good behavior. That rule had originally been introduced because the prisons were overcrowded, and it was abolished just 3 years after Wylene and Lilly were killed.

 But because of the legal rules around sentencing, it still applied to Edmund. So, Edmund agreed to the deal and got 15 years in prison. He pleaded guilty to Wylene’s murder, but he never revealed any details about what he had done, including the motive. Four years later, in December 2021, he was able to take advantage of that old early release rule, and he was set free.

With the time Edmund had already spent behind bars awaiting trial, his total punishment for the double murder came out to just 7 years in prison. By the time Edmund was arrested, the victims’ parents had long since passed away. But the rest of the family were left stunned by how everything played out.

 They had waited three decades for the killer to finally be caught, and in the end, he walked away with such a short sentence. As of now, Edmund is still free, and there is almost no chance he will ever be charged with Lilly’s murder. The only thing the judge was able to do was ban him from coming to Houston until 2030.

 But aside from that, he remains a completely free man. Share your thoughts on this story in the comment section, and don’t forget to press the like button if you enjoyed my video. Thank you for watching.