Bio

Jerry Walter McFadden was born on March 21, 1948, in the United States. He did not advance beyond the seventh grade and later worked in manual labor jobs, including construction, oil field work, and cable installation. Before the 1986 murders, McFadden had a long criminal history centered on sexual violence. He had multiple rape convictions dating back to the 1970s, including assaults in Denton, Haskell, and West Texas. 

By the mid-1980s, McFadden was back in the community after his latest parole. His prior record and later crimes made him one of the most widely known violent offenders in East Texas during that period.

Murder Story

On May 4, 1986, Jerry Walter McFadden carried out a violent crime spree involving three young victims from Hawkins, Texas: Suzanne Denise Harrison, age 18, Gena Turner, age 20, and Bryan Boone, age 19.

Authorities said the three victims disappeared during a drive around the Lake Hawkins area. Prosecutors later alleged that McFadden abducted them and murdered them in separate attacks.

Suzanne Harrison was beaten, sexually assaulted, and strangled with her own underwear. Her body was discovered the following day near a roadside park. Several days later, the decomposing bodies of Gena Turner and Bryan Boone were found in a ditch near Ore City. Both had been shot with a .38-caliber pistol.

McFadden was arrested on May 6, 1986, after witnesses reported seeing one of the victims riding in his truck. Although evidence concerning all three deaths was introduced, he was formally tried for the capital murder of Suzanne Harrison. Before trial, McFadden escaped from the Upshur County Jail, seized a female jailer as hostage, and triggered one of the largest manhunts in Texas history. Hundreds of officers searched for him over three days before he was recaptured. The hostage escaped unharmed.

His trial was moved to Bell County because of intense publicity. On July 14, 1987, a jury convicted him of capital murder. He was sentenced to death. After years of appeals in state and federal courts, McFadden was executed by lethal injection at Huntsville Unit on October 14, 1999. He declined to make a final statement.