Hi, crime junkies. I'm your host, Ashley Flowers. And I'm Britt. And today's story is one that found me about eight months ago. I was coming through our case suggestions and one of them just jumped out. It was from a woman down in Texas named Jolita Wilkinson who wanted help rewriting the false narrative around her sister's death,

a death that was ruled such a shameful accident in the 1980s small-town Texas place they lived

that her family didn't really even want to speak of it. So she was never able to voice her

concerns about a crime scene that she had to help clean up, one that she

believes pointed to murder. And part of her submission, I actually want to read it to you.

It says, quote, my parents did not want to stir the pot because her past may embarrass the

family and her three-year-old son. So I told them, after they pass, I would dig into the truth.

They have now passed, and I feel it's time to really investigate her death, being as there are so

many coincidences, discrepancies, and I hate that my nephew has lived the past 40 years,

believing his mom accidentally killed herself masturbating.

This woman came to us believing that her sister might have actually been murdered by a known serial killer, but she didn't know where to go from there.

So a few months ago, I put one of our reporters on the case.

And through our own investigation, we have come to agree with Jolita.

Her sister was murdered. But maybe not by the roaming serial killer she thought, because our investigation led us to the cases of two other women

who died in this same small town, and all of these women link back to one local man.

So, let me start with the story of Rowena Wilkinson Zappalak. Music You know, I'm going to be able to be. I'm going to I'm going to be. When Jolita was only 14 or 15, her family got a call from the local sheriff's office in Fayette County, Texas, that her 20-year-old sister, Rowena, died in her studio apartment over a saddle shop in Flatonia, Texas.

It was unexpected for everyone and only made more shocking by what authorities told them.

According to the sheriff's office, Rowena had died via suicide by masturbation.

The rope around her neck and the dildo on her bed were the clear signs that deputies

pointed to when breaking the news to her family. But when Jolita and her dad went to Rowena's

apartment the day after this to clean it out, they saw so much more that to Jolita painted a

completely different picture of what happened.

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