ODESSA, Texas — If you lived in Odessa in the 1990s, you might've heard the name B.L. King.
"He was the owner of the Torch Club, which was a strip club here in Odessa over off of Golder," Odessa Crime Stoppers CEO Susan Rogers said.
Wealthy and popular, King looked like he was living the life.
Until one fateful day…
"B.L. King was murdered in 1996," Rogers said. "Shot to death inside of his house."
King was found with three gunshots to his torso and head.
That was 26 years ago, and the case is still cold.
But Odessa is a small town, and King knew a lot of people.
So how could a high-profile case… of the King of Odessa... go this cold?
This is the story of BL King.
Called “flamboyant," "generous," "good-humored" and "lovable” by his peers, B.L. King was a very likable guy who always helped people who needed it.
He was able to help due to his obvious wealth.
"He was kind of a flashy guy, always had a lot of money, dressed real nice, drove nice cars, that sort of thing," Rogers said.
So when he was murdered, police considered robbery as the motive.
"You know, in the beginning, investigators thought that it was a robbery or theft of some kind," Rogers said. "And there were a few things that were missing from the house but nothing that was so specific that they could actually call it a botched robbery."
That's not the only thing that didn't add up to police. There were no signs of forced entry, and money and jewelry were left on King's body.
This made the murder look personal.
"We learned that B.L. was a very private person when it came to his home life," Rogers said. "And so he didn't let a lot of people just walk in his door. If you walked up to his door, knocked on the door, you weren't gonna get in the door. He had to pretty much know who you were. And law enforcement has always thought that it was somebody that he knew, that he would have never just let someone into his house."
Someone as popular as King made for a laundry list of suspects.
"I know that they did interview and identify several people in that investigation but they were just never able to get to who that who did it," Rogers said.
So who murdered B.L. King? It's a question his family still wants answered.
"I do know that B.L. King has family members that are still alive and that they need answers," Rogers said. "You know, they need to know what happened and it needs to be closed."
And after 26 years, this once cold case has new hope.
Odessa Crime Stoppers, like "The Basin’s Unsolved," are trying to solve as many cold cases as they can.
One of those ways is through a relatively new medium: podcasting.
"So we have a deputy that's a coordinator for us from the sheriff's office here in Ector County. His name is Ryan Kelly," Rogers said. "And he said 'Odessa Crime Stoppers can do a podcast, we can do our cold cases,' and then the wheels just started spinning. And we've been able to in about, oh gosh, I think in about two weeks Ryan had the equipment we needed, knew everything that we needed to do, knew how to get it posted to the podcast sites. And what we're doing is we're actually interviewing family members, we're interviewing the detectives from back in that day, and we're interviewing experts in the field of forensics and some different and some different things."
The first episode was released in January, about B.L. King himself.
And the process seems to be working.
"We just happened to mention one thing that triggered this person that called us memory and made him want to call and talk to us about what he remembered," Rogers said. "The Texas Rangers were actually working on this case at one point, so we've gotten them involved with that, and gotten the information to them and they are currently looking into the new information that was received."
It goes to show that one new bit of information can be the tipping point for any of these cases.
Who knows? Maybe you know something that could close a case.
"Someone somewhere knows something," Kelly said in King's episode.
Maybe one more tip — yours — is all it takes.
If you're interested in Odessa Crime Stoppers' Podcast visit them at 333tips.org.