The Texas Cadet Murder

An obsessive teenage love leads to the brutal murder of a fellow student.

Victim Adrianne Jones (photo source)

“There are not any winners in this case.”

Judge Joe Drago

The field (photo source)

The Body in the Field

It was around 7 a.m. on the morning of Monday, December 4, 1995, just light outside, when Gary Foster left his home, headed to a row of mailboxes to deposit an envelope before starting his day. Foster was a farmer and made daily checks on the southern edge of his property on Seeton Road, where dilapidated buildings were. He stored tools there and made it a practice to watch for vandals.

Foster’s farm was located on the outskirts of Cedar Hills, a suburb of Dallas, 16 miles and seemingly a world away. Often called the “hill country of Dallas,” its nearly 36 square miles is dotted with native evergreen trees and antennas — its elevation makes it a prime location for the antennas of local television and radio stations. Boasting a much slower pace of life than Dallas, Cedar Hills was known for a deadly 1856 tornado and a 1932 bank robbery committed by a sidekick of the infamous Bonnie and Clyde.

December 4 was just another day for Foster as he drove by the outer edges of the Joe Pool Lake recreation area which was ringed by barbed wire in an effort to keep trespassers out. His own property, which abutted Joe Pool Lake, had a barbed-wire gate which Foster was certain he had secured the night before. This morning, however, it was askew. Believing that his land was visited by late-night loiterers, he headed toward the gate to fix it before he lost some of his cattle. He was nearly at the gate when he saw what he took at first to be a lump in the grass. The more he focused, the clearer the image became and Foster realized he was looking at a human body.

Only when he drove closer and pulled up even with the gate was he able to tell that it was a young woman. She wore a white sweatshirt, blue and green plaid flannel shorts and white socks — no shoes. Her arms were at her side and the toe of one of her socks was snagged on a single barb of wire, giving the…