WICHITA FALLS, Texas (APBnews.com) -- Convicted killer Faryion Edward Wardrip, who served 11 years in prison for suffocating a 21-year-old waitress, has confessed to killing four other Texas women in the mid-1980s.
Wichita County District Attorney Barry Macha told APB News today that Wardrip admitted that he killed college student Terry Lee Sims in 1984 and three other women in 1985.
Wardrip, 39, was charged last week with capital murder in the stabbing death of Sims, and two more counts of capital murder were added Tuesday for the killings of Toni Gibbs and Ellen Blau. He was indicted by a grand jury in the Sims and Blau slayings Wednesday.
Wardrip will be arraigned on the Sims and Blau cases in the next few weeks, while the Gibbs case will go to trial in neighboring Archer County on March 5, Macha said.
10 unsolved killings
Macha said Wardrip has also admitted strangling 25-year-old Fort Worth homemaker Debra Taylor, whose body was found in a grove of trees on March 29, 1985, five days after she disappeared. Fort Worth investigators arrived at Wichita County jail Wednesday to question Wardrip about the Taylor case, and he has yet to be charged.
The Taylor homicide was one of 10 unsolved cases that occurred about the same period that Wardrip admitted he killed the other women.
Macha said he does not know if there will be any additional charges filed against Wardrip but said he is convinced a number of unsolved cases will get a fresh look.
"I do expect more re-examination of those files," said Macha.
It was a combination of "old-fashioned police work" and modern DNA analysis that connected Wardrip to the murders and helped crack cold cases that had stumped police, Macha said.
DNA clears two
"Police had been looking at different suspects in all the cases," he said. "After two suspects were cleared by DNA in the Sims and Gibbs cases all bets were off. I knew we had to start from scratch and see if these cases were related."
After discovering that the DNA from sperm found in the bodies of Sims and Gibbs matched, Macha brought in a new detective early this year to go through the files and see if any suspects' names matched.
Paroled in 1997, Wardrip had remarried, taken a job working for a screen and door factory and become a regular churchgoer, even teaching Sunday school to children at Hamilton Street Church of Christ in his hometown of Olney.
Saliva from a coffee cup
When Wardrip's name surfaced in the files, Macha sent a detective to the factory where Wardrip worked. The detective followed Wardrip until he saw him toss a used coffee cup in the waste basket, which the detective retrieved. The DNA from Wardrip's saliva on the cup matched the DNA found on Sims and Gibbs, said Macha.
The body of the first victim, Sims, a Midwestern State University education major and health care worker, was found in a friend's bathroom Dec. 20, 1984. Her hands were tied with an electrical cord. She had been stabbed 11 times and raped.
Wichita Falls terrorized
Sims' murder was one of four that occurred in Wichita Falls over an 18-month period, terrifying women residents who began buying guns and avoiding going out alone at night.
Gibbs's corpse was found on February 15, 1985, in a bus left in Archer County. Also it had been stabbed repeatedly and raped.
In the third case, Wardrip was indicted in the 1985 death of Blau, a 21-year-old Midwestern State University student whose rotting corpse was found Oct. 10, 1985, in a field north of Wichita Falls, Wichita County Assistant District Attorney Rick Mahler said.
Wardrip was considered guilty of asphyxiating 21-year-old Tina Kimbrew, in her apartment on May 6, 1986, and was condemned in December, 1986 to 35 years of prison.
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