A break in Houston\u2019s nearly 36-year-old \u201cLovers Lane\u201d cold case is bringing two families closer to long-awaited answers after DNA evidence led to an arrest in Nebraska, authorities said.<\/p>\n
Prosecutors say 64-year-old Floyd William Parrott was arrested by an FBI SWAT team Wednesday night in Nebraska and is now charged with capital murder in the 1990 killings of Cheryl Henry and Andy Atkinson.<\/p>\n
\u201cThese unsolved murders have weighed so incredibly heavy on these families and our communities for more than three decades,\u201d Harris County District Attorney Sean Teare said. \u201cThat stops today.\u201d<\/p>\n
A case that haunted families for decades<\/p>\n
Henry and Atkinson were in their early 20s and had been dating only a few weeks when Houston police found them tied up with their throats slashed in West Houston during the summer of 1990, family members said. <\/p>\n
A 64-year-old man has been charged with capital murder in connection to the 1990 killings of 22-year-old Cheryl Henry, and Andy Atkinson, 21, Harris County District Attorney Sean Teare announced. (Copyright 2026 by KPRC Click2Houston – All rights reserved.)<\/p>\n
The brutal crime scene, later known as the Lovers Lane murders, left investigators searching for answers for decades.<\/p>\n
Andy Atkinson\u2019s stepsister, Francesca Del Rosso, said she was overwhelmed when she learned an arrest had finally been made.<\/p>\n
\u201cI fell to the floor and just started crying. I couldn\u2019t believe it. The day finally came,\u201d Del Rosso said. \u201cAndy was a living soul in our house … (our father) would hound these detectives every single day, and they\u2019ll tell you that same thing. And he just never gave up.\u201d <\/p>\n
Atkinson had only moved to Houston from North Carolina in the weeks leading up to his killing.<\/p>\n
Cheryl Henry\u2019s sister, Shane Henry, said she never expected the case would be solved.<\/p>\n
\u201cI just never thought we would find him,\u201d she said. \u201cNot out of their hard work, it has nothing to do with that, it\u2019s just how do you go 36 years and never do it again and never get caught. So I figured he was dead. So I\u2019m very happy to know he\u2019s alive and will be held accountable for his actions.”<\/p>\n
How investigators say the case broke open<\/p>\n
Retired Houston Police homicide detective John Belk, who worked the case for years and retired in 2009, said investigators pursued numerous leads over the years.<\/p>\n
\u201cI myself \u2026 looked at over 36 potential suspects,\u201d Belk said.<\/p>\n
Belk said the presence of DNA evidence was always a key piece that led him to believe the case would be solved, even in 1990 when the science was still developing.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe had DNA and back in 1990 that was an exciting new technology,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
According to court records, the breakthrough came after Houston police received a tip naming Parrott. It\u2019s not clear how long investigators had that tip, and neither Teare, the police department, nor the mayor\u2019s office would provide an answer.<\/p>\n
Investigators submitted DNA from a 1996 sexual assault case involving Parrott to a national database known as CODIS. Compared to DNA recovered from the 1990 murder scene, records show investigators had a match.<\/p>\n
In the 1996 case, Parrott was charged with sexual assault and investigators collected DNA, but a grand jury no-billed him and the case did not move forward, Teare said. <\/p>\n
A newly assigned detective, who has only had the case for a matter of months, later went back to that DNA sample, submitted it to a national database, and it matched the DNA associated with the 1990 killings, authorities said.<\/p>\n
Prosecutors: More victims may be out there<\/p>\n
Teare said investigators are now looking beyond the double murder and are asking the public for information.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe believe that there are victims of numerous different types of crimes that are still living with it right now,\u201d Teare said.<\/p>\n
Prosecutors also said Parrott had a history in the 1980s and 1990s of impersonating law enforcement, and that months before the August 1990 killings, investigators say he drove a vehicle outfitted with law-enforcement-style equipment including police lights.<\/p>\n
Old Mugshot photo of capital murder suspect, Floyd William Parrott. (Copyright 2026 by KPRC Click2Houston – All rights reserved.)Prosecutors with the Harris County District Attorney’s Office said Floyd William Parrott, 64, had a history in the 1980s and 1990s of impersonating law enforcement, and that months before the August 1990 killings, investigators say he drove a vehicle outfitted with law-enforcement-style equipment including police lights. (Copyright 2026 by KPRC Click2Houston – All rights reserved.)Prosecutors with the Harris County District Attorney’s Office said Floyd William Parrott, 64, had a history in the 1980s and 1990s of impersonating law enforcement, and that months before the August 1990 killings, investigators say he drove a vehicle outfitted with law-enforcement-style equipment including police lights. (Copyright 2026 by KPRC Click2Houston – All rights reserved.)Prosecutors with the Harris County District Attorney’s Office said Floyd William Parrott, 64, had a history in the 1980s and 1990s of impersonating law enforcement, and that months before the August 1990 killings, investigators say he drove a vehicle outfitted with law-enforcement-style equipment including police lights. (Copyright 2026 by KPRC Click2Houston – All rights reserved.)Prosecutors with the Harris County District Attorney’s Office said Floyd William Parrott, 64, had a history in the 1980s and 1990s of impersonating law enforcement, and that months before the August 1990 killings, investigators say he drove a vehicle outfitted with law-enforcement-style equipment including police lights. (Copyright 2026 by KPRC Click2Houston – All rights reserved.)Prosecutors with the Harris County District Attorney’s Office said Floyd William Parrott, 64, had a history in the 1980s and 1990s of impersonating law enforcement, and that months before the August 1990 killings, investigators say he drove a vehicle outfitted with law-enforcement-style equipment including police lights. (Copyright 2026 by KPRC Click2Houston – All rights reserved.)Prosecutors with the Harris County District Attorney’s Office said Floyd William Parrott, 64, had a history in the 1980s and 1990s of impersonating law enforcement, and that months before the August 1990 killings, investigators say he drove a vehicle outfitted with law-enforcement-style equipment including police lights. (Copyright 2026 by KPRC Click2Houston – All rights reserved.)<\/p>\n
Records also indicate that when the murders happened near what is now Houston\u2019s Energy Corridor, the area was undeveloped and considered remote. Investigators later learned from a past arrest report that Parrott worked about a mile away, according to case records.<\/p>\n
Authorities said Parrott had been living in Montgomery County until a couple of years ago.<\/p>\n
Extradition fight underway<\/p>\n
Parrott is now fighting extradition to Texas. During a court hearing this week, he said he didn\u2019t want to willingly go back to Texas and the matter is now set for a hearing in late April, according to Lancaster County Attorney Pat Condon.<\/p>\n
The Harris County District Attorney\u2019s Office says it is working to obtain a governor\u2019s warrant to speed up Parrott\u2019s return to Texas, and Teare said he expects Parrott could be in a Harris County courtroom within about a month and a half. <\/p>\n
Teare also said he will be part of the team prosecuting the case.<\/p>\n
Teare said the physical evidence still points to the possibility others could have been involved, and investigators are not closing the door on anything.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis justice has been delayed,\u201d Teare said. \u201cWe can\u2019t give Cheryl and Andy back to you. We\u2019ll never know the people that they could have become.\u201d<\/p>\n
What investigators want from the public<\/p>\n
Houston police and prosecutors are urging anyone with information related to the Lovers Lane killings, or Parrott\u2019s other possible activities, to contact the Houston Police Department Homicide Division or Crime Stoppers at 713-222-TIPS, or the DA\u2019s office Cold Case Division at 713-274-5640.<\/p>\n
For the victims\u2019 families, the arrest is a major step, one that brings relief and a fresh wave of questions after decades without answers.<\/p>\n
Copyright 2026 by KPRC Click2Houston – All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A break in Houston\u2019s nearly 36-year-old \u201cLovers Lane\u201d cold case is bringing two families closer to long-awaited answers…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":223754,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[2539,294,405,56,58,57,28055],"class_list":["post-223753","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-houston","tag-cold-case","tag-crime","tag-harris-county","tag-houston","tag-houston-headlines","tag-houston-news","tag-lovers-lane-murders"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/223753","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=223753"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/223753\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/223754"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=223753"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=223753"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=223753"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}